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MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS |
Chapter LVI: Marriage—Property—War—PoliticsCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Directly or indirectly, you have already all you need about marriage in its relation to Magical Training. The Hindu proverb sums it all up: "There are seven kinds of wife—like a mother, a sister, a daughter, a mistress, a friend, an enemy and a slave; of these the only good one is the last." But from your questions I gather that what you want is advice on how to advise, how marriage as an institution is regarded by The Book of the Law. Very good. It is not actually mentioned; but that it is contemplated is shown by the use of the word "wife"—AL I, 41. The text confirms my own thesis "There shall be no property in human flesh." So long as this is observed I see no reason why two or more people should not find it convenient to make a contract according to the laws of customs of their community. But my above thesis is all important; note the fury of denunciation in AL I, 41-42! As to property in general, the Book lays down no law. So far as one can see, it seems to adhere to "the good old rule, the simple plan that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can." I think that your best course is to work out all such problems for yourself; at least it is an admirable if arduous, mental exercise. One ought, theoretically, to be able to deduce the ideal system from the Magical Formula of the Aeon of Horus. Now then, as to war. You need hardly have asked the question; the whole Book is alive with it; it thrills, it throbs, it tingles on almost every page. It even goes into details. Strategy: "Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! ..." AL III, 9. Then AL III, 3 - 8. England, I suppose. Verse 6 suggests the mine-layer to any one who has seen one in action. Verse 7 might refer to the tank or the aeroplane—or to something we haven't yet got. Notice also Verse 28, a surprising conclusion to the long magical instruction about the "Cakes of Light." Then the mysterious opening of Verse 46 demands attention and research! Can "...the Forties:..." refer to the years '39 (e.v.) onward—will this war last till '49 (e.v.)? Can the "...Eighties..." be symbolic, as the decade in which universal peace seemed to nearly everybody as assured for an indefinite period? There are any number of other passages, equally warlike; but see II, 24. It is a warning against internecine conflict between the masters; see also III 58,59. Hitler might well quote these two reminders that the real danger is the revolt of the slave classes. They cannot rule or build; no sooner do they find themselves in a crisis than mephitic rubbish about democracy is swept into the dustbin by a Napoleon or a Stalin. There is just one exception to the general idea of ruthlessness; some shadowy vision of a chivalrous type of warfare is granted to us in AL III, 59: Significant, perhaps, that this and a restatement of Thelema came immediately before "There is an end of the word of the God enthroned in Ra's seat, lightening the girders of the soul." (AL III, 61) And this is "As brothers fight ye!" Perhaps the Aeon may give birth to some type of warfare "under Queensbery rules" so to say. A baptism of those who assert their right to belong to the Master class. Something, in short, not wholly dissimilar from the jousts of Feudal times. But on such points I should not care to adventure any very positive opinion. The last part of your question refers to politics. "The word politics surprises by himself," as Count Smorltork observed. Practically all those parts of the Book which deal with social matters may be considered as political in the old an proper sense of the word; of modern politics it disdains to speak. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally yours, 666 Chapter LVII: Beings I have Seen with my Physical EyeCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Well do you know my lifelong rule never to make any assertion that cannot be verified, or at least supported by corroborative evidence, on any subject pertaining to Magick. When, therefore, you express curiosity as to how much of the normally super-sensible world has been revealed to my senses, and especially that of sight, you must take my answer as "without prejudice," "e. and o.e.", "under the rose," and "in a Pickwickian sense." If you choose to call me a lunatic and/or a liar, I shall accept the verdict with mine accustomed imperturbability. Whether what I am about to tell you is "true" or not doesn't matter, as in any case it proves nothing in particular. What does matter is to accept nothing whatever from the "Astral Plane" without the most conclusive and irrefragable internal evidence. That is enough for the caveat part of it; now I plunge direct into the autobiographical. I begin with my childhood. There is one incident, not quite relevant in this place, but yet of such supreme significance that I dare not omit it. I must have been about 6 years old. I was capering round my father during a walk through the meadows. He pointed out a bunch of nettles in the corner of the field, close to the gate (I an see it quite clearly to-day!) and told me that if I touched them they would sting. Some word, gesture, or expression of mine caused him to add: Would you rather be told, or learn by experience? I replied, instantly: I would rather learn by experience. Suiting the action to the word, I dashed forward, plunged in the clump, and learnt. This incident is the key to the puzzle of my character. But, as a child, what did I see? I cannot think of any one person who subsequently devoted his life to Magick who has not at least one early experience of seeing angels, or fairies, or something of the sort. But A.C.? Nary a one. I was brought up on the Bible, a literalist, fundamentalist—all that a Plymouth Brother could wish. It never occurred to me to doubt a word of what I was told. Perhaps the Wolf's Tail of an healthy scepticism gleamed pale at the age of 10, when I asked my form master how it was that Christ managed to be dead for three days and three nights between Friday night and Sunday morning. He said that he did not know, and (to a further question) that no one had ever explained it. This merely filled me with ambition to be the great exegetist who had explained it. I never thought of doubting the story. Well, all this time, and then through puberty, despite my romantic bent, my absorption in the gramarye of Sir Walter Scott, my imaginative life as one of his heroes, and the rest of it. I never had even a moment's illusion that anything of the sort had ever happened to me. I went through all the motions; I haunted all the places where such things are reputed likely to happen, but nothing did happen. There is one exception, and one only. It was in 1896, at Arolla in the Pennine Alps. I took my cousin, Gregor Grant, a fine climber but with little experience beyond scrambles, and in poor physical condition, for the second (first guideless) ascent of the N.N.E. ridge of Mont Collon, a long and exacting climb of more than average difficulty. I had to help him with the rope for most of the climb. This made us late. I dashed for the quickest way down, a short but very steep ridge with one decidedly bad patch, to the great snowfield at the head of the valley. At the bottom of the last pitch a scree-strewn slope, easy going, led to the snows. We took off the rope, and I sat down to coil it and light a pipe, while he wandered down. By this time I was as tired as 14 dogs, each one more tired than all the rest put together; what I call "silly tired." I took a chance (for nightfall was near) on resting 5 or 10 minutes. Restored, I sprang to my feet, threw the coiled rope over my shoulder, and started to run down. But I was too tired to run; I slackened off. Then, to my amazement, I saw of the slopes below me, two little fellows hopping playfully about on the scree. (A moment while I remind you that all my romance was Celtic; I had never ever read Teutonic myths and fables.) But these little men were exactly the traditional gnome of German fold-tales; the Heinzelmänner that one sees sometimes on German beer-mugs (I have never drunk beer in my life) and in friezes on the walls of a Conditorei. I hailed them cheerfully—at first I thought they were some of the local nobility and gentry of a type I had not yet encountered; but they took no notice, just went on playing about. They were still at it when I reached my cousin, sheltering behind some boulders at the foot of the slope; and I saw no more of them. I saw them as plainly as I ever saw anything; there was nothing ghostly or semi-transparent about them. A curious point is that I attached no significance to this. I asked my cousin if he had seen them; he said no. My mind accepted the incident as simply as if I had seen Chamois. Yet even to-day when I have seen lots and lots of things more wonderful, this incident stands out as the simplest and clearest of all my experiences. I give myself full marks! "Why?" Isn't it obvious? It means that I am not the semi-hysterical type who takes wish-phantasms for facts. When I started seriously to study and practise Magick in the Autumn of '98 e.v., I wished and wished with all my might; but I never got anything out of it. With the exception above recorded, my first experiences were the direct result of intense magical effort on the traditional lines; there was no accident about it; when I evoked N to visible appearance, I got N and nobody else. But even so, there isn't much to splash! The first definitely physical sight was due to the "evocation to visible appearance" of the Goetia demon Buer by myself and V.H. Frater "Volo Noscere."1 (Our object was to prolong the life, in imminent danger, of V.H. Frater Iehi Aour—Allan Bennett—Bhikkhu Ananda Metteya—and was successful; he lived another 20 odd years. And odd years they were!) I was wide awake, keyed up, keenly observant at the time. The temple was approximately 16 feet by 8, and 12 high. A small "double- cube" altar of acacia was in the centre of a circle; outside this was a triangle in which it was proposed to get the demon to appear. The room was thick with the smoke of incense, some that of Abramelin, but mostly, in a special censer in the triangle, Dittany of Crete (we decided to use this, as H.P.B. once said that its magical virtue was greater than that of any other herb). As the ceremony proceeded, we were aware that the smoke was not uniform in thickness throughout the room, but tended to be almost opaquely dense in some parts of it, all but clear in others. This effect was much more definite than could possibly be explained by draughts, of by our own movements. Presently it gathered itself together still more completely, until it was roughly as if a column of smoke were rising from the tri- angle, leaving the rest of the room practically clear. Finally, at the climax of the ritual—we had got as far as the "stronger and more potent conjuration"—we both saw, vaguely enough, but yet beyond doubt, parts of a quite definite figure. In particular, there was a helmet suggesting Athene (or horror! Brittania!), part of a tunic or chlamys, and very solid footgear. (I thought of "the well-greaved Greeks.") Now this was very far from satisfactory; it corres- ponded in no wise with the appearance of Buer which the Goetia had led us to expect. Worse, this was as far as it went; no doubt, seeing it at all had disturbed our concentration. (This is where training in Yoga would have helped our Magick.) From that point it was all a wash-out. We could not get back the enthusiasm necessary to persist. We called it a day, did the banishings, closed the temple, and went to bed with our tails between our legs. (And yet, from a saner point of view, the Operation had been a shining success. "Miraculous" things began to happen; in one way and another the gates opened for Allan to migrate to less asthmatic climes; and the object of our work was amply attained.) I give prominence to this phenomenon because what we saw, little and unsatisfactory as it was, appeared to our normal physical sight. I learned later that there is a kind of sight half-way between that and the astral. In a "regular" astral vision one sees better when the eyes are shut; with this intermediate instrument, to close them would be as completely annihilating as if the vision were an ordinary object of sight. It seems, too, as if I had picked up something of the sort as an aftereffect of the Evocation of Buer—a Mercurial demon; for phenomena of one sort or another were simple showered on me from this moment, pari passu with my constantly improving technique in regular "astral visions." Sometimes I was quite blind, as compared with Frater V.N.; for when the circles was broken one nightùsee the whole story in my Autohagiography—he saw and identified dozens and scores of Abramelin demons as they marched widdershins around my library, while all I saw of them was a procession of "half-formed faces" moving shadowy through the dimly-lit room. When it was a matter of the sense of touch, it was far otherwise; I got it good and hearty—but that is not the subject of this letter. I find all this excessively tedious; I resent having to write about it at all; I wonder whether I am breaking some beastly by-law; in fact, I shall ask you to be content with Buer as far as details go; I never saw anything of importance with purely physical sight with anything like the clarity of my adventure on Mont Collon. Yes, as I think it over, that by-law is to thank. This Spring I saw very plainly, on four separate occasions, various beings of another order than ours. I was ass enough to tell one or two pupils about it... And I've never been able to see any more. This, however, it is a positive duty to tell you. One can acquire the power of seeing, with this kind of sight that is neither wholly normal nor wholly astral, all the natural inhabitants of the various places that one reaches in one's travels; one can make intimate contact with individual "elementals" as closely as one can with human beings or animals, although the relation is rarely continuous or permanent. The conditions of such intercourse are complex: (a) one must have the necessary degree of initiation, magical efficiency, and natural ability; (b) one must be at the time in the appropriate magical state, or mood; (c) both parties must desire to make the contact, or else one must be lawfully the superior, a master and slave relationship, (d) the magical conditions at the time must be suitable and propitious; e.g., one would not make love to a salamandrine during a sandstorm. Of course, like all operations, any such efforts must be justified by their consoance with one's True Will. On this note I end this abortive letter. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: Lat., "I want to know." George Cecil Jones. Chapter LVIII: "Do Angels Ever Cut Themselves Shaving?"Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. A very witty way to put it! "Do angels ever cut themselves shaving?" Rem acu tetigisti,1 again. (English: you big tease?) What sort of existence, what type or degree of reality, do we attribute to them? (By angel, of course, you mean any celestial—or infernal—being such as are listed in the Hierarchy, from Metatron and Ratziel to Lilith and Nahema.) We read of them, for the most part, as if they were persons—although of another order of being; as individual, almost, as ourselves. The principal difference is that they are not, as we are, microcosmic. The Angels of Jupiter contain all the Jupiter there is, within these limits, that their rank is not as high as their Archangel, nor as low as their Intelligence or their Spirit. But their Jupiter is pure Jupiter; no other planet enters into their composition. We see and hear them, usually (in my own experience) as the result of specific invocation. Less frequently we know them through the sense of touch as well; sometimes their presence is associated with a particular perfume. (This, by the way, is very striking, since it has to overcome that of the incense.) I must very strongly insist, at this point, on the difference between "gods" and "angels." Gods are macrocosmic, as we microcosmic: an incarnated (materialised) God is just as much a person, an individual animal, as we are; as such, he appeals to all our senses exactly as if he were "material." But everything sensible is matter in some state or other; how then are we to regard an Angel, complete with robes, weapons, and other impedimenta? (I have never known a god thus encumbered, when he has been "materialised" at all. Of course, the mere apparition of a God is subject to laws similar to those governing the visions of angels.) For one thing, all the laws that we find in operation on various parts of the "Astral Plane" are valid. Two things can occupy the same place at the same time. They are "swift without feet, and flying without wings."2 They change size, shape, appearance, appurtenances of all sorts, at will. Anything that is required for the purpose of the vision is there at will. They bring their own background with them. They are able to transfer a portion of their energy to the seer by spontaneous action without appreciable means. But here is where you question arises—what is their "life" like? In the visions, they never do anything but "go through the motions" appropriate to their nature and to the character of the vision. Are we to conclude that the whole set of impressions is no more than symbolic? Is it all a part of oneself, like a daydream, but a daydream intensified and made "real" because its crucial incidents turn out to be true, as must always occur during the testing of the genuineness of the vision? Shall we infringe Sir William Hamilton's Law of Parsimony if we extend our conception of our own powers, and conclude that the vision is but a manifestation of our Unconscious, presented in a symbolic form convenient for our understanding? I'm sorry, but I can't let it go at that! Some of my own experiences have been so confoundedly objective that it just won't work. So there we are back to your original question about shaving and I fear me sorely that "Occam's razor" will help us no whit. It seems to me much simpler to say that these Angels are "real" individuals, although living in a world of whose laws we have no conception; and that, in order to communicate with us, they make use of the symbolic forms appropriate; employ, in short, the language of the Astral Plane. After all, it's only fair; for that is precisely what we do to them when we invoke them. Ha! Ha! Ha! I suppose you think you've caught me out in an evasion there! Not so, dear child, not so: this state of affairs is nothing strange. Ask yourself: "What do I know of Therion's mode of life?" Whenever I see him, he's always on his best behaviour." I've hardly ever seen him eat; perhaps he does so only when I am there, so as not to embarrass me by a display of his holiness." His universe touches mine at only a very few points." The mere fact of his being a man, and I a woman, makes sympathetic understanding over a vast range of experience almost impossible, certainly imperfect." Then all his reading and his travels touch mine at very few points." And his ignorance of music makes it an almost grotesque extension of magnanimity for me to admit his claim to belong to the human species . . . U.S.W.3" Then: "How do we manage to communicate at all? There is bound to be an impassable gulf between us at the best, when one considers that his connotation of the commonest words like 'mountain', 'girl', 'school', 'Hindu', 'oasis', is so vastly different from mine. But to do it at all! What actually have we done?" Think it out! We have made a set of queerly-shapen marks on a sheet of paper, given them names, attached a particular sound to each, made up (God knows how and why!) combinations of these, given names and sounds to them too, and attached a meaning—hardly ever the same for you as for me—to them, made combinations of these too according to a set of quite arbitrary rules, agreed—so far as agreement is possible, or even thinkable—to label a thought with some such arrangement: and there we are! You have in this fantastically artificial way succeeded in conveying your thought to my mind. Now, turn back to Magick; read there how we work to establish intelligible intercourse between ourselves and the "angels." If you can find any difference between that method and this, it is more than I can. Finally, please remember as a general rule that all magical experience is perfectly paralleled by the simplest and commonest phenomena of our daily life! People who tell you that it is "all quite different beyond the Veil" or what not, are blithering incompetents totally ignorant of the nature of things. Incidentally, Bertrand Russell has given us a superb mathematical proof of this theorem; but I won't afflict you with it at this time of asking. On the contrary, I will tell you more about "communication." There is a method of using Ethyl Oxide which enables one (a) to analyse one's thoughts with a most exquisite subtlety and accuracy, (b) to find out—in the French phrase—"what is at the bottom of the bottle." By this they mean the final result of any project or investigation; and this, surprisingly often, is not at all what it is possible to discover by any ordinary means. For instance, one might ask oneself "Do I believe in God?" and, after a vast number of affirmative answers of constantly increasing depth and subtlety, discover with a shock that "at the bottom of the bottle" one believed nothing of the sort! Or vice versa. On one occasion the following experiment was carried out. A certain Adept was to make use of the Sacred Vapour, and when the time seemed ripe, to answer such questions as should be put to him by his Scribe. Presently, after about an hour's silence, the Scribe asked: "Is communication possible?"But this he meant merely to enquire whether it would now be in order for him to begin to ask his prepared list of questions. But the Adept thought that this was Question No. 1: meaning "Is there any valid means of making contact between two minds?" He remained intensely silent—intensely, as opposed to his previous rather fidgety abstention from talking—for a very long time, and then broke slowly into a long seductive ripple of hushed laughter, suggestive of the possession of some ineffably delicious secret, of a moonlight revel of Pan with his retinue of Satyrs, nymphs and fauns. I shall say no more, save to express the hope that you have understood this story, and the Truth and Beauty of this answer. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally yours,, 666 1: Lat. "You've hit the nail on the head" (lit. "you've touched the matter with a needle." 2: Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon. 3: U.S.W is German for "etc." – W.E.H. Chapter LIX: GeomancyCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Your last letter has really put me up a gum tree. I do not see how I can write you an account of Geomancy. At first sight it looks as if all I could do was to refer you to the official text book of that sublime and difficult art. You will find in the Equinox, Volume I, No. 2. (or am I mistaken and its is No. 4?) I cannot bother to refer to it, and the books are not under my hand.1 There is, of course, a short account in Magick and I do not think that it is a very satisfactory one, certainly not in view of what you have asked me. No, it certainly won't do at all. The main point of your letter appears to be a question as to whether I think it worth your while to devote a great amount of time to it; whether its usefulness repays the pains required to master it. Now here we come to a question of personality. The first thing to remember about Geomancy is that although the various intelligences are attributed to the twelve signs of the Zodiac they all appertain to the element of earth. Anyone therefore who has got in his nativity an earthy sign rising, or the sun in an earthly sign, or a good proportion of planets in an earthy sign, is much more likely to find Geomancy attractive than anyone the principal features of whose horoscope are devoted to other elements, especially air, which of course is the enemy of earth. Now these remarks apply of course very much to the type of question that is likely to be within the grasp of the Geomantic Intelligences, that must certainly be considered as well as the natural faculty of the practitioner to master the art. I ought of course to emphasize that I am just the worst person in the habitable globe that you could have asked about this matter, as my rising sign and my planets are all in fire, air, or water, except Neptune, which as Astrology teaches, refers not so much to the Native as to the period of life. It has accordingly been exceptionally difficult for me to be of much use to people who have come to me with enquiries similar to yours, still more when they have planted themselves down solidly at my feet and insisted on my teaching them. There is, however, a certain meagre harvest to be gained from my experience. I should like to tell you what happened to such a man.2 A resident of Johannesburg and singularly gifted with the power of getting physical results to take place as a result of Magical experiments. This man was as strongly attracted to Geomancy as I was repelled, and I do not know that it would be fair for me to claim that I had been of any special use to him, though he was always kind enough to say so. When I pointed out that the answers to Geomantic questions were so vague and indeterminate he had already devised a method whereby this difficulty (which he admitted as existing) could be overcome. It is of course of the very first importance in Geomancy to frame your questions accurately; for the Intelligences serving the Art delight in tricksome gambols. If there is a possibility of assigning a double meaning to the question you can bank on their finding it, and deceiving you. Of all this my disciple was well aware; and he had become extremely artful in allowing no ambiguity to spoil any of his questions. But as to the further difficulty about their vagueness, what he did was to arrange a series of questions narrowing the issue step by step until he had succeeded in obtaining a precise instruction which would resolve his original difficulty. I do think, as a matter of fact, that I was able to help to some extent on the purely theoretical side of the Art, and he went back to South Africa feeling himself fully equipped to deal with any problem that might arise. At that time we were particularly anxious to wind up the first volume of the Equinox with a No. 10, which should be a really massive contribution to Magical thought. That meant a very considerable increase in the cost of production. All this my Disciple, of course, knew, and on arriving in Johannesburg he said to himself "Well, here I am in a part of the world where the earth teams with gold and diamonds. I will procure the necessary funds for the Equinox and various other financial necessities of the Work by Geomantic divination. Now, then, he thought, in and about Johannesburg we have both gold and diamonds; that is exactly the chance for these tricky earth spirits to take advantage of the ambiguity. I will therefore frame the question so as to cover both sources of riches. I will not specify gold or diamonds. I will say simply "mineral wealth." The answers to his series of questions indicated that he was to go out of the city where he would find a deposit. The next questions in his series were directed to finding the direction in which he should start his exploration. That was easy. The next question was the distance involved, and he could think of no way of framing questions which would inform him on that very important point. He got at it indirectly, however, by asking as to his means of transport, and as to that the answer was quite clear and unmistakable. He was to use a horse. Well, he had a Boer pony, and next morning he set forth with provisions for a day's journey. On and on he went and found no geological indication of any mineral wealth. Presently he began to get tired and thought it was a little late. He could see in every direction across the Veldt and there was nothing at all. A mile or so in front of him, however, was a row of small kopjes. He said, I may as well go on and get a view from the top. This he did; and there was still no geological pointer. It struck him, however, that he was getting short of water; and just below on the far side of the kopje were a number of apparently shallow pools. "I will fill my skin and give my horse a drink and get home feeling like a fool." But, when he got to the water, his horse turned sharply aside and refused to drink. At that he dismounted and put his finger in the water to test it. He had struck one of the most important deposits of alkali in South Africa. Mineral wealth indeed! He went home rejoicing and took the necessary steps to protect his find. In the course of the formalities he found it necessary to come to London, which he did, and told me the whole story. Unfortunately we end with an anti-climax. The negotiations went wrong; and the property was stolen from under his nose by one of the big alkali firms. However, it was a good mark for Geomancy. I am afraid that all this is a digression. As I indicated above, what you want to know is to be found in the official instruction on the subject in the Equinox. Now far be it from me to cast any doubt on any official instruction, but I cannot help saying that in this particular instance it does not give very full details, and I think you would be well advised to investigate the whole subject afresh, basing you enquiry on the general principles of the science. You will presumably have noticed that the Geomantic figures are derived from taking the permutations of two things, four at a time, just as the trigrams of Fu-Hsi are two things taken three at a time, and the Hexagrams of the Yi are two things taken six at a time. The system is consequently based upon 16 figures and no more. Of course all systems of divinations which have any claim to be reasonable are based upon a map of the universe, or at least the Solar system, and 16 is really rather a limited number of units to manipulate. However, if you are the type of person who has a natural bent towards this particular Art you will be able to develop it on your own lines, guided by your own experience. I do not think there is anything further to add to these scattered remarks except that so far as I know none of the treatises on the subject (with the single exception of the official instruction) are any use at all. I feel rather acutely how unsatisfactory these remarks must sound to you, but it is the best that I can do for you. You must regard it either as an excuse, or a confession of incompetence, that I have always had this instinctive distaste for the subject. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: The item on
"Geomancy" is in Equinox, Vol I, No. 2. The method provided
there is the French adaptation of an African method like the Ifa Oracle
of the Yoruba people at Great Zimbabwe. This technique has superficial
similarities to the Yi King, and four-line Geomancy was known in Europe
from late Medieval times. The Geomancy mentioned in The Sacred Magic of
Abra-Melin and in a few stories of the Arabian Nights is usually based
on recognition of shapes, including Arabic letters, in randomly
disturbed sand. This French method uses a count of odd or even in a
series of random strikes against a sand or earth surface to determine
the figure – WEH. 2: According to the version of this story in Confessions, this was James Windram, Frater Semper Paratus, who later became head of the South African section of the O.T.O. under Crowley – T.S. Chapter LX: KnackCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I am very glad that it has not been necessary in all this long correspondence with you, to discuss the question of Knack. You seem to be specially gifted; you were able to get the results directly from following out the instructions, and I am glad that it is through you, on behalf of other people, to whom you have communicated these instructions, that this letter has become necessary. When Otto Morningstar was trying (with indifferent success) to teach me how to play French Billiards in Mexico City I found one particular difficulty, and that was how to play the massé shot. He kept on explaining and explaining and demonstrating and demonstrating, and none of it seemed any good. I understood intellectually, well enough; but somehow or other it never came off. Presently he said that he guessed he knew what was the matter. Although I had the whole thing perfect in my mind I had not made the link between my mind, my eye and my hand, and what I must do was not to go to him for teaching, of which I had had already enough and more than enough. He told me if I went on trying it would happen quite suddenly and unexpectedly one day that I found I could do it. This was particularly decent of him because it was in direct contradiction with his financial interest. But he was an all-round good man. So I cut him out so far as the massé shot was concerned and redoubled my practice of it. What he said came out right; one day I found that I had acquired the knack of it. Now with these semi-pupils of yours the same thing probably applies. The point you raise in particular as baffling them is the getting on to the astral plane. It is not much good explaining why the failure occurs, or at what point it occurs; the only thing that is any use is for the pupil to go on and on and on eternally. He must find out for himself where the snag is, and he must continue his experiment until he acquires the knack. All this should be perfectly obvious; the same sort of thing applies to every kind of game which you know. There is a particular knack for instance in putting. It is not that your calculations are wrong, it is not that your stance is wrong, it is not that your grip is wrong, it is that for some reason or other you fail to co-ordinate all these various factors in the problem; and sooner or later the moment comes when it appears to you quite natural to succeed in getting out of the body, or in opening the eyes on the astral plane, or in getting hold of the particular form of elemental energy which has until that moment escaped you. I have mentioned the question of astral journeys because that is one which in your experience, as indeed it has been in mine, is the one that most frequently occurs. I do not know why it is that people should get so easily discouraged as they do. I can only suggest that it is because they are touching so sensitive a spot in their spiritual and magical organisation that it upsets them; they feel as if they were completely hopeless in a much more serious way than if it was a matter of learning some trick in some such game as chess or billiards. Of course, the worst of it is that failure in these early stages is liable to destroy their confidence in the teacher, and I think it would be a very wise plan on your part to warn them about that. I ought incidentally to mention that this sudden illumination—that is not quite the right word but I cannot think of a better one—is quite different to the sudden confidence which takes hold of one in the Yoga practices, the more I think of it the more I feel that the question of sensitiveness is of the greatest importance. In Yoga practices one does not, at least as far as my experience goes, come against the delicacy that one does in all magical and astral practices. The reason for what is, I think, quite obvious. All the Yoga practices are ultimately of the protective type, whereas with magical and astral practices one is exposing oneself to the contact of exterior (or apparently exterior) forces. In neither case however is there any sort of reason at all for discouragement; and as I said above the cure in all cases is apparently the same. In one way or another the veil is rent, the pupil becomes the master, and the reason for that is really rather beyond my analysis so far as that has gone at present. I do not know whether it is some kind of awakening of some faculty of the magical self, though that seems to me the simplest and most probable explanation; but in any case there is no doubt about the nature of the experience, and there can be no difficulty about the recognition of it when it occurs. Now, dear Sister, I hope that this letter may be of real use to you in dealing with those difficult semi-pupils. In particular I hope that you will make a point of insisting on how encouraging this doctrine is. Your pupils must not calculate; that indeed is one point where the magical record is rather a hindrance than otherwise. It reminds me of the story of the Psychologist who wanted to judge the difference in temperament between an Englishman, as Scotsman and an Irishman, in judging the amount of Whisky in a bottle in the next room. They had to go in, report, and come back, and tell him what they thought about it. He filled it 50% with great accuracy. The Irishman came back fairly cheerful; he rubbed his hands; "Well, there's half a bottle left, your honour." When the Scotsman came back his face was full of gloom: "I'm afraid," he says, "that half a bottle has gone." Then the Englishman had his turn. He came in all over smiles, rubbing his hands, and said: "There's not a drop left, so that's that." Moral—Be English! Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666
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