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MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS

Chapter I: What is Magick?

Cara Soror,

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

What is Magick? Why should anyone study and practice it? Very natural; the obvious preliminary questions of any subject soever. We must certainly get all this crystal clear; fear not that I shall fail to set forth the whole business as concisely as possible yet as fully, as cogently yet as lucidly, as may prove within my power to do.

At least I need not waste any time on telling you what Magick is not; or to go into the story of how the word came to be misapplied to conjuring tricks, and to sham miracles such as are to this day foisted by charlatan swindlers, either within or without the Roman Communion, upon a gaping crew of pious imbeciles.

First let me go all Euclidean, and rub your nose in the Definition, Postulate and Theorems given in my comprehensive (but, alas! too advanced and too technical) Treatise on the subject.1  Here we are!

I. DEFINITION:

MAGICK

is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.*

(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge.  I therefore take "magical weapons," pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations"—these sentences—in the "magical language" i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct.  I call forth "spirits" such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people.  The composition and distribution is thus an act of

MAGICK

by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

II. POSTULATE:

ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.

(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold.  I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in sufficient quantity and of adequate strength, and place it, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold, and so forth.  Every Change has its own conditions.

In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms.  But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)

III. THEOREMS:

1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act.†

(Ilustration: See "Definition" above.)

2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.

3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.

(Illustrations: There may be failure to understand the case; as when a doctor makes a wrong diagnosis, and his treatment injures his patient.  There may be failure to apply the right kind of force, as when a rustic tries to blow out an electric light.  There may be failure to apply the right degree of force, as when a wrestler has his hold broken.  There may be failure to apply the force in the right manner, as when one presents a cheque at the wrong window of the Bank.  There may be failure to employ the correct medium, as when Leonardo da Vinci found his masterpiece fade away.  The force may be applied to an unsuitable object, as when one tries to crack a stone, thinking it a nut.)

4. The first requisite for causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the condition.

(Illustration: The most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one's own True Will, or of the means by which to fulfill that Will.  A man may fancy himself a painter, and waste his life trying to become one; or he may be really a painter, and yet fail to understand and to measure the difficulties peculiar to that career.)

5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces.

(Illustration: A banker may have a perfect grasp of a given situation, yet lack the quality of decision, or the assets, necessary to take advantage of it.)

6. "Every man and every woman is a star."  That is to say, every human being is intrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character and proper motion.

7. Every man and every woman has a course, depending partly on the self, and partly on the environment which is natural and necessary for each.  Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly.

(Illustration: A man may think it his duty to act in a certain way, through having made a fancy picture of himself, instead of investigating his actual nature.  For example, a woman may make herself miserable for life by thinking that she prefers love to social consideration, or vice versa.  One woman may stay with an unsympathetic husband when she would really be happy in an attic with a lover, while another may fool herself into a romantic elopement when her only true pleasures are those of presiding at fashionable functions.  Again, a boy's instinct may tell him to go to sea, while his parents insist on his becoming a doctor.  In such a case, he will be both unsuccessful and unhappy in medicine.

8. A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength.  He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently.

(Illustration: When Civil War rages in a nation, it is in no condition to undertake the invasion of other countries.  A man with cancer employs his nourishment alike to his own use and to that of the enemy which is part of himself.  He soon fails to resist the pressure of his environment.  In practical life, a man who is doing what his conscience tells him to be wrong will do it very clumsily.  At first!)

9. A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.

(Illustration: The first principle of success in evolution is that the individual should be true to his own nature, and at the same time adapt himself to his environment.)

10. Nature is a continuous phenomenon, thought we do not know in all cases how things are connected.

(Illustration: Human consciousness depends on the properties of protoplasm, the existence of which depends on innumerable physical conditions peculiar to this planet; and this planet is determined by the mechanical balance of the whole universe of matter.  We may then say that our consciousness is causally connected with the remotest galaxies; yet we do not know even how it arises from—or with—the molecular changes in the brain.)

11. Science enables us to take advantage of the continuity of Nature by the empirical application of certain principles whose interplay involves different orders of idea, connected with each other in a way beyond our present comprehension.

(Illustration: We are able to light cities by rule-of-thumb methods.  We do not know what consciousness is, or how it is connected with muscular action; what electricity is or how it is connected with the machines that generate it; and our methods depend on calculations involving mathematical ideas which have no correspondence in the Universe as we know it.‡)

12. Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers.  Even his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the past.  and every step in his progress extends his empire.  There is, therefore, no reason to assign theoretical limits§ to what he may be, or to what he may do.

(Illustration: Two generations ago it was supposed theoretically impossible that man should ever know the chemical composition of the fixed stars.  It is known that our senses are adapted to receive only an infinitesimal fraction of the possible rates of vibration.  Modern instruments have enabled us to detect some of these suprasensibles by indirect methods, and even to use their peculiar qualities in the service of man, as in the case of the rays of Hertz and Röntgen.  As Tyndall said, man might at any moment learn to perceive and utilize vibrations of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds.  The question of Magick is a question of discovering and employing hitherto unknown forces in nature.  We know that they exist, and we cannot doubt the possibility of mental or physical instruments capable of bringing us in relation with them.)

13. Every man is more or less aware that his individuality comprises several orders of existence, even when he maintains that his subtler principles are merely symptomatic of the changes in his gross vehicle.  A similar order may be assumed to extend throughout nature.

(Illustration: One does not confuse the pain of toothache with the decay which causes it.  Inanimate objects are sensitive to certain physical forces, such as electrical and thermal conductivity; but neither in us nor in them—so far as we know—is there any direct conscious perception of these forces.  Imperceptible influences are therefore associated with all material phenomena; and there is no reason why we should not work upon matter through those subtle energies as we do through their material bases.  In fact, we use magnetic force to move iron, and solar radiation to reproduce images.)

14. Man is capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives; for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being.  He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will.

(Illustration: Man has used the idea of God to dictate his personal conduct, to obtain power over his fellows, to excuse his crimes, and for innumerable other purposes, including that of realizing himself as God.  He has used the irrational and unreal conceptions of mathematics to help him in the construction of mechanical devices.  He has used his moral force to influence the actions even of wild animals.  He has employed poetic genius for political purposes.)

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* In one sense Magick may be said to be the name given to Science by the vulgar.

† By "intentional" I mean "willed."  But even unintentional acts so seeming are not truly so.  Thus, breathing is an act of the Will-to-live.

‡ For instance, "irrational," "unreal," and "infinite" expressions.

§ i.e. except—possibly—in the case of logically absurd questions, such as the schoolmen discussed in connection with "God."

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15. Every force in the Universe is capable of being transformed into any other kind of force by using suitable means.  There is thus an inexhaustible supply of any particular kind of force that we may need.

(Illustration: Heat may be transformed into light and power by using it to drive dynamos.  The vibrations of the air may be used to kill men by so ordering them in speech as to inflame war-like passions.  The hallucinations connected with the mysterious energies of sex result in the perpetuation of the species.)

16. The application of any given force affects all the orders of being which exist in the object to which it is applied, whichever of those orders is directly affected.

(Illustration: If I strike a man with a dagger, his consciousness, not his body only, is affected by my act; although the dagger, as such, has no direct relation therewith.  Similarly, the power of my thought may so work on the mind of another person as to produce far- reaching physical changes in him, or in others through him.)

17. A man may learn to use any force so as to serve any purpose, by taking advantage of the above theorems.

(Illustration: A man may use a razor to make himself vigilant over his speech, by using it to cut himself whenever he unguardedly utters a chosen word.  He may serve the same purpose by resolving that every incident of his life shall remind him of a particular thing, Making every impression the starting point of a connected series of thoughts ending in that thing. He might also devote his whole energies to some particular object, by resolving to do nothing at variance therewith, and to make every act turn to the advantage of that object.)

18. He may attract to himself any force of the Universe by making himself a fit receptacle for it, establishing a connection with it, and arranging conditions so that its nature compels it to flow toward him.

(Illustration: If I want pure water to drink, I dig a well in a place where there is underground water; I prevent it from leaking away; and I arrange to take advantage of water's accordance with the laws of Hydrostatics to fill it.)

19. Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents.  It insulates him.

(Illustration: A popular leader is most successful when he forgets himself, and remembers only "The Cause."  Self-seeking engenders jealousies and schism.  When the organs of the body assert their presence otherwise than by silent satisfaction, it is a sign that they are diseased.  The single exception is the organ of reproduction.  Yet even in this case self-assertion bears witness to its dissatisfaction with itself, since in cannot fulfill its function until completed by its counterpart in another organism.)

20. Man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted.

(Illustration: You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  A true man of science learns from every phenomenon.  But Nature is dumb to the hypocrite; for in her there is nothing false.*)

21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one with any idea, the means of measurement cease to exist.  But his power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment.

(Illustration: When a man falls in love, the whole world becomes, to him, nothing but love boundless and immanent; but his mystical state is not contagious; his fellow-men are either amused or annoyed.  He can only extend to others the effect which his love has had upon himself by means of his mental and physical qualities.  Thus, Catullus, Dante, and Swinburne made their love a mighty mover of mankind by virtue of their power to put their thoughts on the subject in musical and eloquent language.  Again, Cleopatra and other people in authority moulded the fortunes of many other people by allowing love to influence their political actions.  The Magician, however well he succeeds in making contact with the secret sources of energy in nature, can only use them to the extent permitted by his intellectual and moral qualities.  Mohammed's intercourse with Gabriel was only effective because of his statesmanship, soldiership, and the sublimity of his command of Arabic.  Hertz's discovery of the rays which we now use for wireless telegraphy was sterile until reflected through the minds and wills of the people who could take his truth, and transmit it to the world of action by means of mechanical and economic instruments.)

22. Every individual is essentially sufficient to himself.  But he is unsatisfactory to himself until he has established himself in his right relation with the Universe.

(Illustration: A microscope, however perfect, is useless in the hands of savages.  A poet, however sublime, must impose himself upon his generation if he is to enjoy (and even to understand) himself, as theoretically should be the case.)

23. Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions.  It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.

(Illustration: A golf club is intended to move a special ball in a special way in special circumstances.  A Niblick should rarely be used on the tee, or a Brassie under the bank of a bunker.  But, also, the use of any club demands skill and experience.)

24. Every man has an indefeasible right to be what he is.

(Illustration: To insist that anyone else shall comply with one's own standards is to outrage, not only him, but oneself, since both parties are equally born of necessity.)

25. Every man must do Magick each time that he acts or even thinks, since a thought is an internal act whose influence ultimately affects action, thought it may not do so at the time.

(Illustration: The least gesture causes a change in a man's own body and in the air around him: it disturbs the balance of the entire universe and its effects continue eternally throughout all space. Every thought, however swiftly suppressed, has its effect on the mind.  It stands as one of the causes of every subsequent thought, and tends to influence every subsequent action.  A golfer may lose a few yards on his drive, a few more with his second and third, he may lie on the green six bare inches too far from the hole; but the net result of these trifling mishaps is the difference of a whole stroke, and so probably between having and losing the hole.)

26. Every man has a right, the right of self-preservation, to ful- fill himself to the utmost.†

(Illustration: A function imperfectly performed injures, not only itself, but everything associated with it. If the heart is afraid to beat for fear of disturbing the liver, the liver is starved for blood, and avenges itself on the heart by upsetting digestion, which disorders respiration, on which cardiac welfare depends.)

27. Every man should make Magick the keynote of his life.  He should learn its laws and live by them.

(Illustration: The Banker should discover the real meaning of his existence, the real motive which led him to choose that profession.  He should understand banking as a necessary factor in the economic existence of mankind, instead of as merely a business whose objects are independent of the general welfare.  He should learn to distinguish false values from real, and to act not on accidental fluctuations but on considerations of essential importance.  Such a banker will prove himself superior to others; because he will not be an individual limited by transitory things, but a force of Nature, as impersonal, impartial and eternal as gravitation, as patient and irresistible as the tides.  His system will not be subject to panic, any more than the law of Inverse Squares is disturbed by Elections.  He will not be anxious about his affairs because they will not be his; and for that reason he will be able to direct them with the calm, clear-headed confidence of an onlooker, with intelligence unclouded by self-interest and power unimpaired by passion.)

28. Every man has a right to fulfill his own will without being afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in his proper path, it is the fault of others if they interfere with him.

(Illustration: If a man like Napoleon were actually appointed by destiny to control Europe, he should not be blamed for exercising his rights.  To oppose him would be an error.  Anyone so doing would have made a mistake as to his own destiny, except in so far as it might be necessary for him to learn the lessons of defeat.  The sun moves in space without interference.  The order of Nature provides a orbit for each star.  A clash proves that one or the other has strayed from its course.  But as to each man that keeps his true course, the more firmly he acts, the less likely are others to get in his way.  His example will help them to find their own paths and pursue them.  Every man that becomes a Magician helps others to do likewise.  The more firmly and surely men move, and the more such action is accepted as the standard of morality, the less will conflict and confusion hamper humanity.)

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* It is no objection that the hypocrite is himself part of Nature.  He is an "endothermic" product, divided against himself, with a tendency to break up.  He will see his own qualities everywhere, and thus obtain a radical misconception of phenomena.  Most religions of the past have failed by expecting Nature to conform with their ideals of proper conduct.

† Men of "criminal nature" are simply at issue with their true Wills.  The murderer has the Will-to-live; and his will to murder is a false will at variance with his true Will, since he risks death at the hands of Society by obeying his criminal impulse.

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Well, here endeth the First Lesson.

That seems to me to cover the ground fairly well; at least, that is what I have to say when serious analysis is on the agenda.

But there is a restricted and conventional sense in which the word may be used without straying too far from the above philosophical position.  One might say:—

"Magick is the study and use of those forms of energy which are (a) subtler than the ordinary physical-mechanical types, (b) accessible only to those who are (in one sense or another) 'Initiates'."  I fear that this may sound rather obscurum per obscurius; but this is one of these cases— we are likely to encounter many such in the course of our researches—in which we understand, quite well enough for all practical purposes, what we mean, but which elude us more and more successfully the more accurately we struggle to define their import.

We might fare even worse if we tried to clear things up by making lists of events in history, tradition, or experience and classifying this as being, and that as not being, true Magick.  The borderland cases would confuse and mislead us.

But—since I have mentioned history—I think it might help, if I went straight on to the latter part of your question, and gave you a brief sketch of Magick past, present and future as it is seen from the inside.

What are the principles of the "Masters"?  What are They trying to do?  What have They done in the past?  What means do They employ?

As it happens, I have by me a sketch written by M. Gerard Aumont of Tunis2 some twenty years ago, which covers this subject with reasonable adequacy.

I have been at the pains of translating it from his French, I hope not too much reminiscent of the old traduttore, traditore.  I will revise it, divide it (like Gaul) into Three Parts and send it along.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

Notes

1: i.e., Magick in Theory and Practice.  All Crowley's footnotes are from the original – T.S.

2: Gerard Aumont was a journalist who translated The Book of the Law into French.  However it is generally believed that the actual author of the essay mentioned, The Three Schools of Magick, which occupies chapters 6-8 of Magick Without Tears (it had previously been published in German translation by Thelema Verlag) was Crowley himself – T.S.

Chapter II: The Necessity of Magick for All

Cara Soror,

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

Right glad am I to hear that you have been so thoroughly satisfied with my explanation of what Magick is, and on what its theories rest.  It is good, too, hearing how much you were interested in the glimpse that you have had of some of its work in the world; more, that you grasped the fact that this apparently recondite and irrelevant information has an immediate bearing on your personal life of today.  Still, I was not surprised that you should add: "But why should I make a special study of, and devote my time and energy to acquiring proficiency in, the Science and Art of Magick?

Ah, well then, perhaps you have not understood my remarks at one of our earliest interviews as perfectly as you suppose!  For the crucial point of my exposition was that Magick is not a matter extraneous to the main current of your life, as music, gardening, or collection jade might be.  No, every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration.  Luckily for all of us, most of the acts essential to continued life are involuntary; the "unconscious" has become so used to doing its "True Will" that there is no need of interference; when such need arises, we call it disease, and seek to restore the machine to free spontaneous fulfillment of its function.

But this is only part of the story.  As things are, we have all adventured into an Universe of immeasurable, of incalculable, possibilities, of situations never contemplated by the trend of Evolution.  Man is a marine monster; when he decided that it would be better for him somehow to live on land, he had to grow lungs instead of gills.  When we want to travel over soft snow, we have to invent ski; when we wish to exchange thoughts, we must arrange a conventional code of sounds, of knots in string, of carved or written characters—in a word—embark upon the boundless ocean of hieroglyphics or symbols of one sort or another.  (Presently I shall have to explain the supreme importance of such systems; in fact, the Universe itself is not, and cannot be, anything but an arrangement of symbolic characters!)

Here we are, then, caught in a net of circumstances; if we are to do anything at all beyond automatic vegetative living, we must consciously apply ourselves to Magick, "the Science and Art" (let me remind you!) "of causing change to occur in conformity with the Will."  Observe that the least slackness or error means that things happen which do not thus conform; when this is so despite our efforts, we are (temporarily) baffled; when it is our own ignorance of what we ought to will, or lack of skill in adapting our means to the right end, then we set up a conflict in our own Nature: our act is suicidal.  Such interior struggle is at the base of nearly all neuroses, as Freud recently "discovered"—as if this had not been taught, and taught without his massed errors, by the great teachers of the past!  The Taoist doctrine, in particular, is most precise and most emphatic on this point; indeed, it may seem to some of us to overshoot the mark; for nothing is permissible in that scheme but frictionless adjustment and adaptation to circumstance.  "Benevolence and righteousness" are actually deprecated!  That any such ideas should ever have existed (says Lao-tse) is merely evidence of the universal disorder.

Taoist sectaries appear to assume that Perfection consists in the absence of any disturbance of the Stream of Nescience; and this is very much like the Buddhist idea of Nibbana.

We who accept the Law of Thelema, even should we concur in this doctrine theoretically, cannot admit that in practice the plan would work out; our aim is that our Nothing, ideally perfect as it is in itself, should enjoy itself through realizing itself in the fulfillment of all possibilities.  All such phenomena or "point-events" are equally "illusion"; Nothing is always Nothing; but the projection of Nothing on this screen of the phenomenal does not only explain, but constitutes, the Universe.  It is the only system which reconciles all the contradictions inherent in Thought, and in Experience; for in it "Reality" is "Illusion", "Free-will" is "Destiny", the "Self" is the "Not-Self"; and so for every puzzle of Philosophy.

Not too bad an analogy is an endless piece of string.  Like a driving band, you cannot tie a knot in it; all the complexities you can contrive are "Tom Fool" knots, and unravel at the proper touch.  Always either Naught or Two!  But every new re-arrangement throws further light on the possible tangles, that is, on the Nature of the String itself.  It is always "Nothing" when you pull it out; but becomes "Everything" as you play about with it,* since there is no limit to the combinations that you can form from it, save only in your imagination (where the whole thing belongs!) and that grows mightily with Experience.  It is accordingly well worth while to fulfill oneself in every conceivable manner.

It is then (you will say) impossible to "do wrong", since all phenomena are equally "Illusion" and the answer is always "Nothing."  In theory one can hardly deny this proposition; but in practice—how shall I put it?  "The state of Illusion which for convenience I call my present consciousness is such that the course of action A is more natural to me that the course of action B?"

Or: A is a shorter cut to Nothing; A is less likely to create internal conflict.

Will that serve?

Offer a dog a juicy bone, and a bundle of hay; he will naturally take the bone, whereas a horse would choose the hay.  So, while you happen to imagine yourself to be a Fair Lady seeking the Hidden Wisdom, you come to me; if you thought you were a Nigger Minstrel, you would play the banjo, and sing songs calculated to attract current coin of the Realm from a discerning Public!  The two actions are ultimately identical—see AL I, 22—and your perception of that fact would make you an Initiate of very high standing; but in the work-a-day world, you are "really" the Fair Lady, and leave the minstrel to grow infirm and old and hire an orphan boy to carry his banjo!

Now then, what bothers me it this: Have I or have I not explained this matter of "Magick"—"Why should I (who have only just heard of it, at least as a serious subject of study) acquire a knowledge of its principles, and of the powers conferred by its mastery?"  Must I bribe you with promises of health, wealth, power over others, knowledge, thaumaturgical skill, success in every worldly ambition—as I could quite honestly do?  I hope there is no such need—and yet, shall I confess it?—it was only because all the  good things of life  were suddenly seen of me to be worthless, that I took the first steps towards the attainment of that Wisdom which, while enjoying to the full the "Feast of Life," guarantees me against surfeit, poison or interruption by the knowledge that it is all a Dream, and gives me the Power to turn that dream at will into any form that happens to appeal to my Inclination.

Let me sum up, very succinctly; as usual, my enthusiasm has lured me into embroidering my sage discourse with Poets' Imagery!

Why should you study and practice Magick?  Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly.  You are on the links, whether you like it or not; why go on topping your drive, and slicing your brassie, and fluffing your niblick, and pulling your iron, and socketing your mashie and not being up with your putt—that's 6, and you are not allowed to pick up.  It's a far cry to the Nineteenth, and the sky threatens storm before the imminent night.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

* N ± N = Two or Naught; one is the Magical, the other the mystical, process. You will hear a lot about this one day!

Chapter III: Hieroglypics: Life and Language Necessarily Symbolic

Cara Soror,

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

Very natural, the irritation in your last!  You write:—

"But why?  Why all this elaborate symbolism?  Why not say straight out what you mean?  Surely the subject is difficult enough in any case—must you put on a mask to make it clear?  I know you well enough by now to be sure that you will not fob me off with any Holy-Willie nonsense about the ineffable, about human language being inadequate to reveal such Mysteries, about the necessity of constructing a new language to explain a new system of thought; of course I know that this had to be done in the case of chemistry, of higher mathematics, indeed of almost all technical subjects; but I feel that you have some other, deeper explanation in reserve.

"After all, most of what I am seeking to learn from you has been familiar to many of the great minds of humanity for many centuries.  Indeed, the Qabalah is a special language, and that is old enough; there is not much new material to fit into that structure.  But why did they, in the first place, resort to this symbolic jargon?"

You put it very well; and when I think it over, I feel far from sure that the explanation which I am about to inflict upon you will satisfy you, or even whether it will hold water!  In the last resort, I shall have to maintain that we are justified by experience, by the empirical success in communicating thought which has attended, and continues to attend, our endeavors.

But to give a complete answer, I shall have to go back to the beginning, and restate the original problem; and I beg that you will not suppose that I am evading the question, or adopting the Irish method of answer- ing it by another, though I know it may sound as if I were.

Let me set out by restating our original problem; what we want is Truth; we want an even closer approach to Reality; and we want to discover and discuss the proper means of achieving this object.

Very good; let us start by the simplest of all possible enquiries—and the most difficult—"What is anything?"  "What do we know?" and other questions that spring naturally from these.

I see a tree.
I hear it—rustling or creaking in the wind.
I touch it—hard.
I smell it—acrid.
I taste it—bitter.

Now all the information given by these five senses has to be put together, although no two agree in any sort of way.  The logic by which we build up our complex idea of a tree has more holes than a sponge.

But this is to jump far ahead: we must first analyze the single, simple impression.  "I see a tree."  This phenomenon is what is called a "point-event."  It is the coming together of the two, the seer and the seen.  It is single and simple; yet we cannot conceive of either of them as anything but complex.  And the Point-Event tells us nothing whatever about either; both, as Herbert Spencer and God knows how many others have shown, unknowable; it stands by itself, alone and aloof.  It has happened; it is undeniably Reality.  Yet we cannot confirm it; for it can never happen again precisely the same.  What is even more bewildering is that since it takes time for the eye to convey an impression to the consciousness (it may alter in 1,000 ways in the process!) all that really exists is a memory of the Point-Event. not the Point-Event itself.  What then is this Reality of which we are so sure?  Obviously, it has not got a name, since it never happened before, or can happen again!  To discuss it at all we must invent a name, and this name (like all names) cannot possibly be anything more than a symbol.

Even so, as so often pointed out, all we do is to "record the behaviour of our instruments."  Nor are we much better off when we've done it; for our symbol, referring as it does to a phenomenon unique in itself, and not to be apprehended by another, can mean nothing to one's neighbors.  What happens, of course, is that similar, though not identical, Point-Events happen to many of us, and so we are able to construct a symbolic language.  My memory of the mysterious Reality resembles yours sufficiently to induce us to agree that both belong to the same class.

But let me furthermore ask you to reflect on the formation of language itself.  Except in the case of onomatopoeic words and a few others, there is no logical connection between a thing and the sound of our name for it.  "Bow-wow" is a more rational name than "dog", which is a mere convention agreed on by the English, while other nations prefer chien, hund, cane, kalb, kutta and so on.  All symbols, you see, my dear child, and it's no good your kicking!

But it doesn't stop there.  When we try to convey thought by writing, we are bound to sit down solidly, and construct a holy Qabalah out of nothing.  Why would a curve open to the right, sound like the ocean, open at the top, like you?  And all these arbitrary symbolic letters are combined by just as symbolic and arbitrary devices to take on conventional meanings, these words again combined into phrases by no less high-handed a procedure.

And then folk wonder how it is that there should be error and misunderstanding in the transmission of thought from one person to another!  Rather regard it as a miraculous intervention of Providence when even one of even the simplest ideas "gets across."  Now then, this being so, it is evidently good sense to construct one's own alphabet, with one's own very precise definitions, in order to handle an abstruse and technical subject like Magick.  The "ordinary" words such as God, self, soul, spirit and the rest have been used so many thousand times in so many thousand ways, usually by writers who knew not, or cared not for the necessity of definition that to use them to-day in any scientific essay is almost ludicrous.

That is all, just now, sister; no more of your cavilling, please; sit down quietly with your 777, and get it by heart!

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

Chapter IV: The Qabalah: The Best Training for Memory

Cara Soror,

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

Now you must learn Qabalah.  Learn this Alphabet of Magick.  You must take it on trust, as a child does his own alphabet.  No one has ever found out why the order of the letters is what it is.  Probably there isn't any answer.

If you only knew what I am grappling with in the Yi King! the order of the sixty-four hexagrams. I am convinced that it is extremely significant, that it implies a sublime system of philosophy.  I've got far enough to be absolutely sure that there is a necessary rhythm; and it's killing me by millimetres, finding out why each pair succeeds the last.  Forgive these tears!

But our Magical Alphabet is primarily not letters, but figures, not sounds but mathematical ideas.  Sir Humphrey Davy, coming out of his famous illumination (with some help from Nitrous Oxide he got in) exclaimed: The Universe is composed solely of ideas.  We, analyzing this a little, say: The Universe is a mathematical expression.

Sir James Jeans might have said this, only his banker advised him to cash in on God.  The simplest form of this expression is 0 = 2, elsewhere expounded at great length.  This 2 might itself be expressed in an indefinitely great number of ways.  Every prime number, including some not in the series of "natural numbers", is an individual.  The other numbers with perhaps a few exceptions (e.g. 418) are composed of their primes.

Each of these ideas may be explained, investigated, understood, by means very various.  Firstly, the Hebrew, Greek and Arabic numbers are also letters.  Then, each of these letters is further described by one of the (arbitrarily composed) "elements of Nature;  the Four (or Five) Elements, the Seven (or Ten) Planets, and the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.

All these are arranged in a geometrical design composed of ten "Sephiroth" (numbers) and twenty-two "paths" joining them; this is called the Tree of Life.

Every idea soever can be, and should be, attributed to one or more of these primary symbols; thus green, in different shades, is a quality or function of Venus, the Earth, the Sea, Libra, and others. So also abstract ideas; dishonesty means "an afflicted Mercury," generosity a good, though not always strong, Jupiter; and so on.

The Tree of Life has got to be learnt by heart; you must know it backwards, forwards, sideways, and upside down; it must become the automatic background of all your thinking. You must keep on hanging everything that comes your way upon its proper bough.

At first, of course, all this is dreadfully confusing; but persist, and a time will come when all the odd bits fit into the jig-saw, and you behold—with what adoring wonder!—the marvellous beauty and symmetry of the Qabalistic system.

And then—what a weapon you will have forged!

What power to analyze, to order, to manipulate your thinking!

And please remember when people compliment you on your memory or the clarity of your thought, to give credit to the Qabalah!

That's fine, I seem to hear you purr; that looks a lovely machine.  The Design is just elegant; that scarf-pin of yours is perfectly sweet.

There's only one point: how to make the damn thing work?

Ah yes, like the one in the Apocalypse, the sting is in your tail.

Honest, you needn't worry; it works on ball-bearings, and there's always those "Thirteen Fountains of Magnificent Oil flowing down the Beard of Macroprosopus" in case it creaks a little at first.  But seriously, all the mathematics you need is simple Addition and Multiplication.

"Yeah!" you rudely reply.  "That's what you think; but you haven't got very far in the Qabalah!"

Too true, sister.

The Book of the Law itself insists upon the fact that it contains a Qabalah which was beyond me at the time of its dictation, is beyond me now, and always will be beyond me in this incarnation. Let me direct your spiritual attention to AL I, 54; I, 56; II, 54-55; II, 76; III, 47.

Now there was enough comprehensible at the time to assure me that the Author of the Book knew at least as much Qabalah as I did: I discovered subsequently more than enough to make it certain without error that he knew a very great deal more, and that of an altogether higher order, than I knew; finally, such glimmerings of light as time and desperate study have thrown on many other obscure passages, to leave no doubt whatever in my mind that he is indeed the supreme Qabalist of all time . . . .

"I asked you how to work it."

Don't be so peevish, querulous, and impatient; your zeal is laudable, but it's wasting your own time to hurry me.

Well, when you've got this Alphabet of Numbers (in its proper shape) absolutely by heart, with as many sets of attributions as you can commit to memory without getting confused, you may try a few easy exercises, beginning with the past.

("How many sets of attributions?"—Well, certainly, the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets with the names and numbers of each letter, and its mean- ing: a couple of lists of God-names, with a clear idea of the character, qualities, functions, and importance of each; the "King-scale" of colour, all the Tarot attributions, of course; then animals, plants, drugs, per- fumes, a list or two of archangels, angels, intelligences and spirits—that ought to be enough for a start.)

Now you are armed!  Ask yourself: why is the influence of Tiphareth transmitted to Yesod by the Path of Samekh, a fence, 60, Sagittarius, the Archer, Art, blue—and so on; but to Hod by the Path of Ayin, an eye, 70, Capricornus, the Goat, the Devil, Indigo, K.T.L.

Thirteen is the number of Achad {Hebrew option}, Unity, and Ahebah {Hebrew option}, Love; then what word should arise when you expand it by the Creative Dyad, and get 26; what when you multiply it by 4, and get 52? Then, suppose the Pentagram gets busy, 13 x 5 = 65, what then?

Now don't you dare to come round crawling to me for the answers; work it out yourself what sort of words they ought to be, and then check your result by looking up those numbers in the Sepher Sephiroth: Equinox Vol. I, No. 8, Supplement.

When you are a real adept at all these well-known calculations "prepare to enter the Immeasurable Region" and dig out the Unknown.

You must construct your own Qabalah!

Nobody can do it for you.  What is your own true Number?  You must find it and prove it to be correct. In the course of a few years, you should have built yourself a Palace of Ineffable Glory, a Garden of Indescribable Delight.  Nor Time nor Fate can tame those tranquil towers, those Minarets of Music, or fade one blossom in those avenues of Perfume!

Humph!  Nasty of me: but it has just stuck me that it might be just as well if you made a Sepher Sephiroth of your own!  What a positively beastly thing to suggest!  However, I do suggest it.

After all, it's simple enough.  Every word you come across, add it up, stick it down against that number in a book kept for the purpose.  That may seem tedious and silly; why should you do all over again the work that I have already done for you?  Reason: simple.  Doing it will teach you Qabalah as nothing else could.  Besides, you won't be all cluttered up with words that mean nothing to you; and if it should happen that you want a word to explain some particular number, you can look it up in my Sepher Sephiroth.

By this method, too, you may strike a rich vein of words of your own that I have altogether missed.

No doubt, a Really Great Teacher would have said: "Beware!  Use my Dictionary, and mine alone!  All others are spurious!"  But then I'm not a R.G.T. of that kind.

For a start, of course, you should put down the words that are bound to come in your way in any case: numbers like 11, 13, 31, 37, and their multiples; the names of God and the principal angels; the planetary and geomantic names; and your own private and particular name with its branches.  After that, let your work on the Astral Plane guide you.  When investigating the name and other words communicated to you by such beings as you meet there, or invoke, many more will come up in their proper connections.  Very soon you will have quite a nice little Sepher Sephiroth of your very own.  Remember to aim, above all things, at coherence.

It is excellent practice, but the way, to do some mental arithmetic on your walks; acquire the habit of adding up any names that you have come across in your morning's reading.  Nietzsche has well observed that the best thoughts come by walking; and it has happened to me, more than once or twice, that really important correspondences have come, as by a flashlight, when I was padding the old hoof.

You will have noticed that in this curt exposition I have confined myself to Gematria, the direct relation of number and word, omitting any reference to Notariqon, the accursed art of making words out of initials, like (in profane life) Wren and Gestapo and their horrid brood, or to Temurah, the art of altering the position of the letters in a word,1 a sort of cipher; for these are almost always frivolous.  To base any serious calculations on them would be absurd.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

P.S.  You should study the Equinox Vol. I, No. 5, "The Temple of Solomon the King" for a more elaborate exposition of the Qabalah.

1: Temurah is more normally understood as a form of letter substitution cipher rather than the formation of anagrams as Crowley seems to suggest here; historically it appears that its applications have been as much in the realm of mundane cryptography as in Qabalistic exegesis.  For example, the Viginaire cipher, held unbreakable for a few centuries, used a Latin version of the Qabalistic (so called) "Right Table of Commutations" – T.S.

Chapter V: The Universe: The 0 = 2 Equation

Cara Soror,

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

Yes, I admit everything! It is all my fault.  Looking over my past writings, I do see that my only one-pointed attempt to set forth a sound ontology was my early fumbling letter brochure Berashith.  Since then, I seem to have kept assuming that everybody knew all about it; referring to it, quoting it, but never sitting down seriously to demonstrate the thesis, or even to state it in set terms.  Chapter 0 of Magick in Theory and Practice skates gently over it; the "Naples Arrangement" in The Book of Thoth dodges it with really diabolical ingenuity.  I ask myself why.  It is exceedingly strange, because every time I think of the Equation, I am thrilled with a keen glow of satisfaction that this sempiternal Riddle of the Sphinx should have been answered at last.

So then let me now give myself the delight, and you the comfort, of stating the problem from its beginning, and proving the soundness of the solution—of showing that the contradiction of this Equation is unthinkable.  — — Are you ready?  Forward!  Paddle!

A.  We are aware.

B.  We cannot doubt the existence (whether "real" or "illusory" makes no difference) of something, because doubt itself is a form of awareness.

C.  We lump together all that of which we are aware under the convenient name of "Existence", or "The Universe".  Cosmos is not so good for this purpose; that word implies "order", which in the present stage of our argument, is a mere assumption.

D.  We also tend to think of the Universe as containing things of which we are not aware; but this is altogether unjustifiable, although it is difficult to think at all without making some such assumption.  For instance, one may come upon a new branch of knowledge—say, histology or Hammurabi or the language of the Iroquois or the poems of the Hermaphrodite of Panormita.  It seems to be there all ready waiting for us; we simply cannot believe that we are making it all up as we go along.  For all that, it is sheer sophistry; we may merely be unfolding the contents of our own minds.  Then again, does a thing cease to exist if we forget it?  The answer is that one cannot be sure.

Personally, I feel convinced of the existence of an Universe outside my own immediate awareness; but it is true, even so, that it does not exist for me unless and until it takes its place as part of my consciousness.

E.  All this paragraph D is in the nature of a digression, for what you may think of it does not at all touch the argument of this letter. But it had to be put in, just to prevent your mind from raising irrelevant objections.  Let me continue, then, from C.

F.  Something is.*  This something appears incalculably vast and complex.  How did it come to be?

This, briefly, is the "Riddle of the Universe," which has been always the first preoccupation of all serious philosophers since men began to think at all.

G.  The orthodox idiot answer, usually wrapped up in obscure terms in the hope of concealing from the enquirer the fact that it is not an answer at all, but an evasion, is: God created it.

Then, obviously, who created God?  Sometimes we have a Demiurge, a creative God behind whom is an eternal formless Greatness—anything to confuse the issue!

Sometimes the Universe is supported by an elephant; he, in turn, stands on a tortoise . . . by that time it is hoped that the enquirer is too tired and muddled to ask what holds up the tortoise.

Sometimes, a great Father and Mother crystallize out of some huge cloudy confusion of "Elements" and so on.  But nobody answers the question; at least, none of these God-inventing mules, with their incurably commonplace minds.

H.  Serious philosophy has always begun by discarding all these puerilities.  It has of necessity been divided into these schools: the Nihilist, the Monist, and the Dualist.

I.  The last of these is, on the surface, the most plausible; for almost the first thing that we notice on inspecting the Universe is what the Hindu schools call "the Pairs of Opposites."

This too, is very convenient, because it lends itself so readily to orthodox theology; so we have Ormuzd and Ahriman, the Devas and the Asuras, Osiris and Set, et cetera and da capo, personifications of "Good" and "Evil."  The foes may be fairly matched; but more often the tale tells of a revolt in heaven.  In this case, "Evil" is temporary; soon, especially with the financial help of the devout, the "devil" will be "cast into the Bottomless Pit" and "the Saints will reign with Christ in glory for ever and ever, Amen!"  Often a "redeemer," a "dying God," is needed to secure victory to Omnipotence; and this is usually what little vulgar boys might call a "touching story!"

J.  The Monist (or Advaitist) school, is at once subtler and more refined; it seems to approach the ultimate reality (as opposed to the superficial examination of the Dualists) more closely.

It seems to me that this doctrine is based upon a sorites of doubtful validity.  To tell you the hideously shameful truth, I hate this doctrine so rabidly that I can hardly trust myself to present it fairly!  But I will try.  Meanwhile, you can study it in the Upanishads, in the Bhagavad-Gita, in Ernst Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe, and dozens of other classics.  The dogma appears to excite its dupes to dithyrambs.  I have to admit the "poetry" of the idea; but there is something in me which vehemently rejects it with excruciating and vindictive violence.  Possibly, this is because part of our own system runs parallel with the first equations of theirs.

K.  The Monists perceive quite clearly and correctly that it is absurd to answer the question "How came these Many things (of which we are aware) to be?" by saying that they came from Many; and "Many" in this connection includes Two.  The Universe must therefore be a single phenomenon: make it eternal and all the rest of it—i.e. remove all limit of any kind—and the Universe explains itself.  How then can Opposites exist, as we observe them to do?  Is it not the very essence of our original Sorites that the Many must be reducible to the One?  They see how awkward this is; so the "devil" of the Dualist is emulsified and evaporated into "illusion;" what they call "Maya" or some equivalent term.

"Reality" for them consists solely of Brahman, the supreme Being "without quantity or quality."  They are compelled to deny him all attributes, even that of Existence; for to do so would instantly limit them, and so hurl them headlong back in to Dualism.  All that of which we are aware must obviously possess limits, or it could have no intelligible meaning for us; if we want "pork," we must specify its qualities and quantities; at the very least, we must be able to distinguish it from "that-which-is-not-pork."

But—one moment, please!

L.  There is in Advaitism a most fascinating danger; that is that, up to a certain point, "Religious Experience" tends to support this theory.

A word on this.  Vulgar minds, such as are happy with a personal God, Vishnu, Jesus, Melcarth, Mithras, or another, often excite themselves—call it "Energized Enthusiasm" if you want to be sarcastic!—to the point of experiencing actual Visions of the objects of their devotion.  But these people have not so much as asked themselves the original question of "How come?" which is our present subject.  Sweep them into the discard!

M.  Beyond Vishvarupadarshana, the vision of the Form of Vishnu, beyond that yet loftier vision which corresponds in Hindu classification to our "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel", is that called Atmadarshana, the vision (or apprehension, a much better word) of the Universe as a single phenomenon, outside all limitations, whether of time, space, causality, or what not.

Very good, then!  Here we are with direct realization of the Advaitist theory of the Universe.  Everything fits perfectly. Also, when I say "realization," I want you to understand that I mean what I say in a sense so intense and so absolute that it is impossible to convey my meaning to anyone who has not undergone that experience.†

How do we judge the "reality" of an ordinary impression upon consciousness?  Chiefly by its intensity, by its persistence, by the fact that nobody can argue us out of our belief in it.  As people said of Berkeley's 'Idealism'—"his arguments are irrefutable but they fail to carry conviction."  No sceptical, no idealist queries can persuade us that a kick in the pants is not 'real' in any reasonable sense of the word.  Moreover memory reassures us.  However vivid a dream may be at the time, however it may persist throughout the years (though it is rare for any dream, unless frequently repeated, or linked to waking impressions by some happy conjunction of circumstances, to remain long in the mind with any clear-cut vision) it is hardly ever mistaken for an event of actual life.  Good: then, as waking life is to dream, so—yes, more so!—is Religious Experience as above described to that life common to all of us.  It is not merely easy, it is natural, not merely natural, but inevitable, for anyone who has experienced "Samadhi" (this word conveniently groups the higher types of vision‡) to regard normal life as "illusion" by comparison with this state in which all problems are resolved, all doubts driven out, all limitations abolished.

But even beyond Atmadarshana comes the experience called Sivadarshana,§ in which this Atman (or Brahman), this limit-destroying Universe, is itself abolished and annihilated.

(And, with its occurrence, smash goes the whole of the Advaitist theory!)

It is a commonplace to say that no words can describe this final destruction.  Such is the fact; and there is nothing one can do about it but put it down boldly as I have done above.  It does not matter to our present purpose; all that we need to know is that the strongest prop of the Monist structure has broken off short.

Moreover, is it really adequate to postulate an origin of the Universe, as they inevitably do?  Merely to deny that there ever was a beginning by saying that this "one" is eternal fails to satisfy me.

What is very much worse, I cannot see that to call Evil "illusion" helps us at all.  When the Christian Scientist hears that his wife has been savagely mauled by her Peke, he has to smile, and say that "there is a claim of error."  Not good enough.

* You must read The Soldier an The Hunchback: ! and ? in the Equinox I, 1.

† I have discussed this and the following points very fully in Book 4 Part I, pp. 63-89.

‡ "Vision" is a dreadfully bad word for it; "trance" is better, but idiots always mix it up with hypnotism.

§ Possibly almost identical with the Buddhist Neroda-Samapatti.

N.  It has taken a long while to clear the ground. That I did not expect; the above propositions are so familiar to me, they run so cleanly through my mind, that, until I came to set them down in order, I had no idea what a long and difficult business it all was.

Still, it's a long lane, etc.  We have seen that "Two" (or "Many") are unsatisfactory as origin, if only because they can always be reduced to "One"; and "One" itself is no better, because, among other things, it finds itself forced to deny the very premises on which it was founded.

Shall we be any better off if we assume that "Ex nihilo nihil fit" is a falsehood, that the origin of All Things is Nothing?  Let us see!

O.  Shall we first glance at the mathematical aspect of Nothing?  (Including its identical equation in Logic.)  This I worked out so long ago as 1902 e.g. in Berashith, which you will find reprinted in The Sword of Song, and in my Collected Works, Vol. I.

The argument may be summarized as follows.

When, in the ordinary way of business, we write 0, we should really write 0ⁿ.1  For 0 implies that the subject is not extended in any dimension under discussion.  Thus a line may be two feet in length, but in breadth and depth the coefficient is Zero.  We could describe it as 2f × 0b × 0d, or n^{2f + 0b + 0d}.2

What I proposed in considering "What do we mean by Nothing?" was to consider every possible quality of any object as a dimension.

For instance, one might describe this page as being nf + n'b + n''d + 0 redness + 0 amiability + 0 velocity + 0 potential and so on, until you had noted and measured all the qualities it possesses, and excluded all that it does not. For convenience, we may write this expression as X^{f+b+d+r+a+v+p}—using the initials of the qualities which we call dimensions.

Just one further explanation in pure mathematics.  To interpret X¹, X¹⁺¹ or X², and so on, we assume the reference to be to spatial dimensions.  Thus suppose X¹ to be a line a foot long, X² will be a plane a foot square, and X³ a cube measuring a foot in each dimension.  But what about X⁴?  There are no more spatial dimensions.  Modern mathematics has (unfortunately, I think) agreed to consider this fourth dimension as time.  Well, and X{5}?  To interpret this expression, we may begin to consider other qualities, such as electric capacity, colour, moral attributes, and so on.3  But this remark, although necessary, leads us rather away from our main thesis instead of toward it.

P.  What happens when we put a minus sign before the index (that small letter up on the right) instead of a plus?  Quite simple. x² = X¹⁺¹ = X¹ + X¹.  With a minus, we divide instead of multiplying.  Thus, X^3-2 = X³ ÷ X² = X¹, just as if you had merely subtracted the 2 from the 3 in the index.

Now, at last, we come to the point of real importance to our thesis: how shall we interpret X⁰?  We may write it, obviously, as X^1-1 or X^n-n.  Good, divide.  Then X¹ ÷ X¹ = 1.  This is the same, clearly enough, whatever X may be.

Q.  Ah, but what we started to do was discover the meaning of Nothing.  It is not correct to write it simply as 0; for that 0 implies an index 0¹, or 0{²}, or 0ⁿ.  And if our Nothing is to be absolute Nothing, then there is not only no figure, but no index either.  So we must write it as 0⁰.

What is the value of this expression?  We proceed as before; divide.

0⁰ = 0^n-n = 0ⁿ ÷ 0ⁿ = (0ⁿ ÷ 1) × (1 ÷ 0ⁿ).  Of course 0ⁿ ÷ 1 remains 0; but 1 ÷ 0{n} = ∞.

That is, we have a clash of the "infinitely great" with the "infinitely small;" that knocks out the "infinity" (and Advaitism with it!) and leaves us with an indeterminate but finite number of utter variety. That is: 0⁰ can only be interpreted as "The Universe that we know."

R.  So much for one demonstration.  Some people have found fault with the algebra; but the logical Equivalent is precisely parallel.  Suppose I wish to describe my study in one respect: I can say "No dogs are in my study," or "Dogs are not in my study."  I can make a little diagram: D is the world of dogs; S is my study. Here it is:

Diagram 1

The squares are quite separate.  The whole world outside the square D is the world of no dogs: outside the square S, the world of no-study.  But suppose now that I want to make the Zero absolute, like our 0⁰, I must say "No dogs are not in my study."

Or, "There is no absence-of-dog in my study."  That is the same as saying: "Some doge are in my study;" diagram again:

Diagram 2

In Diagram 1, "the world where no dogs are" included the whole of my study; in Diagram 2 that absence-of-dog is no longer there; so one or more of them must have got in somehow.

That's that; I know it may be a little difficult at first; fortunately there is a different way—the Chinese way—of stating the theorem in very much simpler terms.

S. The Chinese, like ourselves, begin with the idea of "Absolute Nothing." They "make an effort, and call it the Tao;" but that is exactly what the Tao comes to mean, when we examine it.  They see quite well, as we have done above, that merely to assert Nothing is not to explain the Universe; and they proceed to do so by means of a mathematical equation even simpler than ours, involving as it does no operations beyond simple addition and subtraction.  They say "Nothing obviously means Nothing; it has no qualities nor quantities."  (The Advaitists said the same, and then stultified themselves completely by calling it One!)  "But," continue the sages of the Middle Kingdom, "it is always possible to reduce any expression to Nothing by taking any two equal and opposite terms."  (Thus n = (-n) = 0.)  "We ought therefore to be able to get any expression that we want from Nothing; we merely have to be careful that the terms shall be precisely opposite and equal."  (0 = n + (-n).  This then they did, and began to diagrammatize the Universe as the Ηa pair of opposites, the Yang or active male, and the Yin or passive Female, principles. They represented the Yang by an unbroken ( ——— ), the Yin by a broken ( —  — ), line. (The first manifestation in Nature of these two is Thƒi Yang, the Sun, and the Thƒi Yin, the Moon.) This being a little large and loose, they doubled these lines, and obtained the four Hsiang. They then took them three at a time, and got the eight Kwa. These represent the development from the original Œ {S.B. cap "I"} to the Natural Order of the Elements.

I shall call the male principle M, the Female F.

Note how admirably they have preserved the idea of balance.  M.1. and F.1. are perfection.  M.2. and F.2. still keep balance in their lines. The four "elements" show imperfection; yet they are all balanced as against each other.  Note, too, how apt are the ideograms.  M.3. shows the flames flickering on the hearth, F.3., the wave on the solid bottom of the sea; M.4., the mutable air, with impenetrable space above, and finally F.4., the thin crust of the earth masking the interior energies of the planet.  They go in to double these Kwâ, thus reaching the sixty-four Hexagrams of the Yî King, which is not only a Map, but a History of the Order of Nature.

It is pure enthusiastic delight in the Harmony and Beauty of the System that has led me thus far afield; my one essential purpose is to show how the Universe was derived by these Wise Men from Nothing.

When you have assimilated these two sets of Equations, when you have understood how 0 = 2 is the unique, the simple, and the necessary solution of the Riddle of the Universe, there will be, in a sense, little more for you to learn about the Theory of Magick.

You should, however, remember most constantly that the equation of the Universe, however complex it may seem, inevitably reels out to Zero; for to accomplish this is the formula of your Work as a Mystic.  To remind you, and to amplify certain points of the above, let me quote from Magick pp. 152-3 footnote 2.

All elements must at one time have been separate—that would be the case with great heat.  Now when atoms get to the sun, we get that immense extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again.  Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in combination.  By the way, that atom (fortified with that memory) would not be the same atom; yet it is, because it has gained nothing from anywhere except this memory.  Therefore, by the lapse of time, and by virtue of memory, a thing could become something more than itself; thus a real development is possible.  One can then see a reason for any element deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and only so, can he go; and he suffers the lapse of memory which he has during these incarnations, because he knows he will come through un- changed.

Therefore you can have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible.  This is also the only explanation of how a "Perfect Being" could create a world in which war, evil, etc., exist.  God is only an appearance, because (like "good") it cannot affect the substance itself, but only multiply its combinations.  This is something the same as mystic monotheism; but all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false.  If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural.

It is no objection to this theory to ask who made the elements—the elements are at least there, and God, when you look for him, is not there.  Theism is obscurum per obscurius.  A male star is built up from the centre outwards; a female from the circumference inwards.  This is what is meant when we say that woman has no soul.  It explains fully the difference between the sexes.

Every "act of love under will" has the dual result (1) the creation of a child combining the qualities of its parents, (2) the withdrawal by ecstasy into Nothingness. Please consult what I have elsewhere written on "The Formula of Tetagrammaton;" the importance of this at the moment is to show how 0 and 2 appear constantly in Nature as the common Order of Events.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

1: Add comments to distinguish indices (Abstract Algebra) from powers of numbers.  I shouldn't, but as a physicist, I have to say that Crowley is giving an erroneous layman's opinion and his usage of math notation cannot be considered correct.  These expressions are ok as text, but not as math without redefinition through Abstract Algebra, a field Crowley appears not to know by name.  The ideas are valid, but the expressions are misleading.  It might be wise to add a footnote about the notation being non-traditional.  Notably, this line defies Pythagoras!  Crowley's notation with superscripts is the problem.  It looks like powers of numbers instead of indices.  He probably intended indices, but didn't know how to represent them or flag them in typography – WEH.

The problem is that Crowley's later reasoning, in particular his calculations of the value of 0⁰ only make sense if he means powers.  Now there is nothing per se to stop us representing his "categories" in terms of an n-dimensional space, but each category is incommensurable with the others – T.S.

2: This is bogus math, plain and simple.  If d₁, d₂, ... d_n are the dimensions in n dimensional space of our object, the volume of n-dimensional space it occupies will be d₁ × d₂ × ... ×d_n; if we multiply each dimension by x, the volume of the whole thing is multiplied by xⁿ.  As noted above, the way Crowley develops the argument indicates he is thinking of powers but his use thereof at this point is wrong – T.S.

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