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MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS |
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Chapter LXXI: Morality (2)Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The contents of your letter appalled me. I had hoped that you had left behind forever all that quality of thinking. It is unclean. It is stuffy and flabby. You write of a matter about which you cannot possibly have information, and what you say is not even a good guess; it is simply contrary to fact. It shows also that you have failed to grasp the nature of the O.T.O. Its main raison d'etre, apart from social and political plans, is the teaching and use of a secret method of achieving certain results. This secret is a scientific secret; it is guarded against betrayal or abuse by a very simple automatic arrangement. Its guardians cannot be "dying" any more than electricians as a class can be. It is really difficult to answer your letters. You have got things so higgledy-piggledy. You write of the constitutions of two orders, the A.'. A.'. and the O.T.O.; yet you ignore the printed information about them which you are supposed to have read. I have to answer each sentence of your letter separately, so incoherent have you become! You are a "student" of A.'. A.'., and become a Probationer as soon as you take and pass the examination. (This is intended mostly to make sure that you have some general idea of the principal branches of the subject, and know the more important correspondences,) The rest:—please read One Star in Sight again, and do for God's sake try to assimilate the information there very clearly and very fully given! It is terrifyingly near the state of mind which we symbolize by Choronzon, this hurrying flustered dash of yours from one point of view to another: a set of statements all true after a fashion, but flung out with such apprehensive agitation that a sensitive reader like myself comes near to being upset. You say that you must tread the Path alone: quite true, if only because anything that exists for you is necessarily part of yourself. Yet you have to "go to others", and you become a veritable busybody. You quote odd opinions at random without the means of estimating their value. Cannot I ever get you to understand the difference between an honest and dishonest teacher? I have always made it a rule never to put forward any statement of which I cannot produce proof; when I venture a personal opinion it is always Marked in Plain Figures to that effect. (I refer you to Magick p. 368: p. 375, paragraphs 1 and 2:. and p. 415, paragraphs 000 and 00. We insist from the beginning on the individual character of the work, and upon the necessity of maintaining the objective and sceptical standpoint. You are explicitly warned against reliance upon "authority," even that of the Order itself.) Consider my own assets, personal, social, educational, experiential and the rest: don't you see that all I had to do was to put out some brightly-coloured and mellifluous lie, and avoid treading on too many toes, to have had hundreds of thousands of idiots worshipping me? Please get a Konx om Pax somehow, and read p. XII:
and so on. But I never forget that I am working on the 2,000 year basis; my work will stand when all the pompous platitudes and pleasant pieties have withered for the iridescent soft-soap bubbles that they are. Soap! Yes, indeed. I work on gold, and gold must be cleansed with acid. I really cannot understand how you can be so inaccurate, with the very text before your eyes! You write—"you write that in Jan. 1899 etc." But I don't. Captain J. F. C. Fuller wrote it.1 A small point; but you must learn to be careful about every tiniest detail. Then you go on about "not only invisible chiefs* of the A.'. A.'. . . . . . but also the Chiefs of the Golden Dawn . . ." The Golden Dawn is merely the name for the Outer Order: see Magick pp. 230-231. You have never been taught to read carefully. You write of Theoricus as the grade following Neophyte: it isn't. Back to Magick pp. 230-231!2 You have never taken the trouble to go with me through the Rituals of O.T.O., or you would not ask such questions. The O.T.O. is a training of the Masonic type; there is no "astral" work in it at all, nor any Yoga. There is a certain amount of Qabalah, and that of great doctrinal value. But the really vital matter is the gradual progress towards disclosure of the Secret of the Ninth Degree. To use that secret to advantage involves mastery both of Yoga and of Magick; but neither is taught in the Order. Now it comes to be mentioned, this is really very strange. However, I didn't invent the system; I must suppose that those who did knew what they were about. To me it is (a) convenient in various practical ways, (b) a machine for carrying out the orders of the Secret Chiefs of A.'. A.'., (c) by virtue of the Secret a magical weapon of incalculable power. * How do you know They are "invisible?" I foresee that sooner or later you will be asking for more information about them, so I am planning a separate letter to supply this. (See Letters IX, L and LXXVII) You are not "stuck." You can use your Astral Body well enough: too well, in one way. But I think you need a few more journeys with me: you ought to get on to the stage where the vision results from a definite invocation. Do please forget all these vague statements about the "clarification of one's dream-life" (meaning what?) and "shadow-thinking" (meaning what?) These speculations are idle, and idleness is poison. In your very next paragraph you give the whole show away! "Artistically it appeals to me—but not spiritually." You have been spiritually poisoned. What blasphemy more hideous could be penned? What lie so base, so false, so nasty, what so devilish and deadly a doctrine? I feel contaminated by the mere fact of being in a world where such filth is possible to conceive. I am all but in tears to think of my beloved sister tortured by so foul a denizen of the Abyss. Cannot you see in this the root of all your toadstool spawn of miseries, of doubts, of fears, of indecisions? As an Artist you are a consecrated Virgin Priestess, the Oracle of the Most High. None has the right to approach you save with the most blessed awe, with arms outstretched as to invoke your benediction. By "spiritually" you mean no more than "according to the lower and middle-middle-class morality of the Anglo-Saxon of the period when Longfellow and Tennyson were supposed to be poets, and Royal Academicians painters." There is a highly popular school of "occultists" which is 99 % an escape-mechanism. The fear of death is one of the bogeys; but far deeper is the root-fear—fear of being alone, of being oneself, of life itself. With this there goes the sense of guilt. The Book of the Law cuts directly at the root of all this calamitous, this infamous tissue of falsehood. What is the meaning of Initiation? It is the Path to the realisation of your Self as the sole, the supreme, the absolute of all Truth, Beauty, Purity, Perfection! What is the artistic sense in you? What but the One Channel always open to you through which this Light flows freely to enkindle you (and the world through you) with flowers of inexhaustible fervour and flame? And you set up against That this spectre of grim fear, of shame, of qualms and doubts, of inward quakings lest — — you are too stricken with panic to see clearly what the horror is. You say "the elemental spirits and the Archangels are watching." (!) My dear, dear, sister, did you invent these beings for no better purpose than to spy on you? They are there to serve you; they are parts of your being whose func- tion is to enable you to reach further in one particular direction or another without interference from the other parts, so long as you happen to need them for some service or other in the Great Work. Please cleanse your mind once and for all of this delusion, disastrous and most damnable, that there can be opposition between two essential parts of your nature. I think this idea is a monstrous growth upon the tetanus-soaked soil of your fear of "the senses." Observe how all these mealy-mouthed prigs develop their distrust of Life until hardly an action remains that is not "dangerous" or in some way harmful. They dare not smoke, drink, love—do anything natural to them. They are right!! The Self in them is Guilt, a marsh miasmal of foul pestilence. Last, since "nature, though one expel it with a pitchfork, always returns," they do their "sins" in secret, and pile hypocrisy upon the summit of all their other vices. I cannot write more; it makes me too sad. I hope there is no need. Do be your Self, the radiant Daughter of the Muse! With that command I turn to other tasks. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally yours ever, 666 1: If the reference is to one of the first four installments of The Temple of Solomon the King then her mistake was excusable since Fuller's author credit was buried away in the Index to Equinox vol. I, and given Crowley's habit of talking about himself in the third person it was not an unreasonable assumption; if it was to anything in Equinox of the Gods, she was right and Crowley was wrong since the section of that book reprinted from Equinox I (7) was written by Crowley after Fuller had broken with him – T.S. 2: Her confusion probably stemmed from the fact that Crowley re-named some of the Outer Order grades when reformulating the A.'.A.'.; Neophyte is 1°=10° A.'.A.'. and 0°=0° in the original G.D.; Theoricus is 2°=9° G.D. where it follows 1°=10° Zelator (these titles derive in the first instance from the Masonic Societas Rosicruciana who may in turn have got them from the 18th century German "Golden and Rosy Cross") but is not an A.'.A.'. title – T.S. Chapter LXXII: EducationCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Education means "leading out"; this is not the same as "stuffing in." I refuse to enlarge on this theme; it is all-important. To extract something, you should first know what is there. Here astrology ought to give useful hints; its indications give the mind something to work on. Experience makes "confirmation strong as Holy Writ;" but beware of à priori. Do not be dogmatic; do not insist in the face of disappointment. Astrology in education is useful as geology is to the prospector; it tells you the sort of thing to look for, and the direction in which to explore. There are, however, two main lines of teaching which are of universal value to normal children; it is hardly possible to begin too early. Firstly, accustom his ear from the start to noble sounds; the music of nature and the rhythm of great poetry. Do not aim at his understanding, but at his subconscious mind. Protect him from cacophonous noise; avoid scoring any cheap success with him by inflicting jingles; do not insult him by "baby-talk." Secondly, let him understand, as soon as you start actual teaching, the difference between the real and the conventional in what you make him memorize. Nothing irritates children more than the arbitrary "because I say so." Nobody knows why the alphabet has the order which we know; it is quite senseless. One could construct a much more rational order: e.g. the Mother, the Single and the Double letters, all in the natural order of the elements, planets and signs. Again, we have the "Missionary" Alphabet, arranged "scientifically" as Gutturals, modified ditto, Dentals, Labials, vowels and so on; a most repulsive concoction! But I would not accept any emendation from the God Thoth himself; it is infinitely simpler to stick to the familiar order. But explain to the child that this is only for convenience, like the rule of the road; indeed, like almost any rules! But when your teaching is of the disputable kind, explain that too; encourage him to question, to demand a reason and to disagree. Get him to fence with you; sharpen his wits by dialectic; lure him into thinking for himself. I want tricks which will show him the advantages of a given subject of study; make him pester you to teach him. We did this most successfully at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu; let me give you an instance: reading. One of us would take the children shopping and bring up the subject of ice-cream. Where, oh where could we get some? Presently one would exclaim and point to a placard and say, "I really do believe there'll be some there"—and lo! it was so. Then they would wonder how one knew, and one would say: Why, there's "Helados" printed on that piece of card in the window. They would want to learn to read at once. We would discourage them, saying what hard work it was, and how much crying it cost, at the same time giving another demonstration of the advantages. They would insist, and we should yield—to active, eager children, not to dullards that hated the idea of "lessons." So with pretty well everything; we first excited the child's will in the desired direction. But (you ask) are there any special branches of learning which you regard as essential for all? Yes. Our old unvalued friend St. Paul, the cunning crook who turned the Jewish communism of the Apostles into an international ramp, saw in a vision a man from Macedonia who said "Come over and help us!" This time it has been a woman from California, but the purport of her plaints was identical. Much as I should like to see my Father the Sun once more before I die, nothing doing until—if ever—life recovers from the blight of regulations. Luckily, one thing she said helps us out: someone had told her that I had written on Education in Liber Aleph—The Book of Wisdom or Folly—which has been ready for the printer for more than a quarter of a century—and there's nothing I can do about it! However, I looked up the typescript. The book is itself Education; there are, however, six chapters which treat of the subject in the Special sense in which your question has involved us. So I shall fling these chapters headlong into this letter.
I suppose I might have put it more concisely: Classics is itself Initiation, being the key of the Unconscious; Mathematics is the Art of manipulating the Ruach, and of raising it to Neschamah; and Science is co-terminous with Magick. These are the three branches of study which I regard as fundamental. No others are in the same class. For instance, Geography is almost meaningless until one makes it real by dint of honest travel, which does not mean either "commuting" or "luxury cruises," still less "globe-trotting." Law is a specialized study, with a view to a career; History is too unsystematic and uncertain to be of much use as mental training; Art is to be studied for and by one's solitary self; any teaching soever is rank poison. The final wisdom on this subject is perhaps the old "Something of everything, and everything of something." Love is the law, love under will. Yours ever, 666 P.S. Better mention, perhaps, that literacy is no test of education. For ignorance of life, the don class leaves all others at the post; and it is these monkish and monkeyish recluses, with their hideous clatter and cackle, "The tittering, thin-bearded, epicene," "Dwarf, fringed with fear," the obscene vole, dweller by and in backwaters that has foisted upon us the grotesque and poisonous superstition that wisdom abides only in dogs-eared, worm-eaten, mule-inspired long-forgotten as misbegotten folios. I like the story—it is a true tale—of the old Jew millionaire who bought up the annual waste of the Pennsylvania Railroad—a matter of Three Million Dollars. He called with his cheque very neatly made out—and signed it by making his mark! The Railroad Man was naturally flabbergasted, and could not help exclaiming, "Yet you made all those millions of yours—what would you have been if only you had been able to read and write?" "Doorkeeper at the Synagogue" was the prompt reply. His illiteracy had disqualified him when he applied for the job after landing. The story is not only true, but "of all Truth;" see my previous letter on "Certainty." Books are not the only medium even of learning; more, what they teach is partial, prejudiced, meagre, sterile, uncertain, and alien to reality. It follows that all the best books are those which make no pretence to accuracy: poetry, theatre, fiction. All others date. Another point is that Truth abides above and aloof from intellectual expression, and consequently those books which bear the Magic Keys of the Portal of the Intelligible by dint of inspiration and suggestion come more nearly to grips with Reality than those whose appeal is only to the Intellect. "Didactic" poetry, "realistic" plays and novels, are contradictions in terms. P.P.S. One more effort: the above reminds me that I have said no word about the other side of the medal. There are many children who cannot be educated at all in any sense of the word. It is an abominable waste of both of them and of the teacher to push against brick walls. Yet one last point. I am as near seventy as makes no matter, and I am still learning with all my might. All my life I have been taught: governesses, private tutors, schools, private and public, the best of the Universities: how little I know! I have traveled all over the world in all conditions, from "grand seigneur," to "holy man;" how little I know! What then of the ninety-and-nine, dragged by the ears through suicide examinations, and kicked out of school into factory in their teens? They have learnt only just enough to facilitate the swallowing of the gross venal lies of the radio and the Yellow Press; or, if mother-wit has chanced to warn them, they learn a little—very little—more, getting their Science from a Shilling Handbook and so on, till they know just enough to become dangerous agitators. No, anything like a real education demands leisure, the conversation of the wise, the means to travel, and the rest. There is only one solution: to pick out the diamonds from the clay, cut them, polish them, and set them as they deserve. Attempt no idiot experiments with the muck of the mine! You will observe that I am advocating an aristocratic revolution. And so I am! P.P.P.S. Short of the ideals above outlined, you may as well have a pis aller—words of astonishing insight and wisdom, not alien to the Law Thelema, and written by one who was trained on The Book of the Law.
They are quoted as an extreme example of all that is horrible and evil by Mr. George E. Chust of the Daily Telegraph—from Mein Kampf! P.P.P.P.S. There is a game, an improvement on the "Spelling Bee"—I have anti-christened it "Fore and aft" so as to be natty and naval—which is in my opinion one of the three or four best indoor games for two ever invented. Here are the rules, in brief: any disputed points? Apply to me. 1. A "Word" consists of four or more letters. 2. It must be printed in big black type in the Dictionary chosen for reference. (Nuttall's is fairly good, though some very well-known words are omitted. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary is useless; it is for morons, illiterates, wallowers in "Basic English"—and [I suppose] Oxonians. No proper names, however well-known, unless used as common: e.g. Bobby, a flatfoot, a beetlecrusher, a harness bull; or Xantippe, a shrew, a lady. X-rays is given in the plural only: ditto "Rontgen-rays", and they give "Rontgenogram". "You never can tell!" Participles, plurals and the like are not "words" unless printed as such in big black type. E.g. Nuttall's "Juttingly" is a word; "jutting" is not, being in smaller type. "Soaking" is in small type, but also in big type as a noun; so it is a word.) 3. The Dictionary is the sole and final arbiter. This produces blasphemy, but averts assassination. 4. The first player starts with the letter A. The second may put any letter he chooses either before or after that A. The other continues as he will, and can. 5. The player who cannot add a letter without completing a "word" loses. They proceed to B, and so on to Z. 6. A player whose turn it is must either add his letter within a reasonable (This is a matter of good feeling, courtesy and consideration) time, may say "I challenge" or, alternatively, "That is a 'word'." The other must then give the "word" that he intends, or deny that it is a "word" within the meaning of the Art, as the case may be. The Dictionary decides the winner. The challenged player may give one word only, and that in the form which is printed in the Dictionary; e.g. if he were challenged at BRUSS, and answered Brussels, he would lose; if BRUSSELS-SPROUTS, he would win. Hyphens need not be given. CASHMERE is a "word"; it is a kind of shawl, etc., so is CHARLEY, a night-watchman. Don't argue: the Dictionary decides. 7. This game calls not only for an extensive vocabulary but for courage; foresight, judgment, resource, subtlety and even low cunning. It can be played by more than two players, but the more there are, the more the element of chance comes in; and this is hateful to really fine players and diminishes the excitement. The rapier-play of two experts, when a word changes from one line of formation to another, and then again, perhaps even a third time, is as exhilarating as a baseball-game or a bull-fight. And what the Tartarus-Tophet-Jehanna has all this to do with Education, and the Great Work? This, child! H. G. Wells and others have pointed out with serene justice that a gap in your vocabulary implies a gap in your mind; you lack the corresponding idea. Too true, "Erbert! But I threap that a pakeha with such xerotes as his will chowter with an arsis of ischonophony, beyond aught that any fub, even in Vigonia and dwale mammodis with a cascade from a Dewan tauty, a kiss-me-quick, a chou over her merkin and a parka over her chudder could do to save him, and have an emprosthotonos, when he reads this. Sruti! (Whaur's your Wullie Chaucer noo?) I put this in for you because an American officer,7 very dear to me, flited from the Front for a few days to ask me a few questions—oh, "very much above your exalted grade" my dear—and I thought it might be useful to him to learn this game, needing, as it does, such very meagre apparatus, to wile away some of the long hours between attacks. He picked it up quickly enough; but, after a bit when I suggested that he should pass it on to his comrades-in-arms, he jeered at me openly! Their vocabulary to mine, he said, holds just about the same proportion as mine does to yours; I hypothesized modestly, "about five per cent." (After all, I am forty-five years his senior.) He roared at me. "Not one in a hundred," he said, "know so much as the names of nine-tenths of the subjects that I discuss habitually and fluently. They gasp, they gape, they grunt, the gibber; it is almost always black bewilderment.* And some of them are college graduates—which I'm not." He was snatched from school, and given a commission on the spot, apparently because he was one of very few that could be differentiated from the average Learned Pig. All this made me exceeding sorrowful. I began to understand why my Liber OZ, written entirely in words of one syllable only, with this very idea in mind, turned out to be completely beyond the average man's (or woman's) understanding. I had some Mass Observation done on it. "But this is rank socialism," "Sy, ayn't this all Fascism?" "Oh Golly!" "Cripes!" "Coo!" "How dreadful!" about the nearest most of them got to Ralph Straus and Desmond MacCarthy! Words of one syllable! Louis Marlow8 had already told me what a fool I was to expect that. "All they can digest," said he, "is a mess of stewed clichés with Bird's custard Power." Damn everything—it's true, it's true. So do you at least get together the stones that you need to build your Basilica! * They attach no meaning to these words:
1: Lat., "Of the Will of Children." Cap. 40 of Liber Aleph. 2: Lat., "Of the Method of Disputation." Cap. 41 of Liber Aleph. 3: Lat., "Of Knowing the Will of a Child." Cap. 42 of Liber Aleph. 4: Lat., "Of the Art of Cultivating the Mind: (1) Mathematics." Cap. 47 of Liber Aleph. 5: Lat., "Continues: (2) Classics." Cap. 48 of Liber Aleph. 6: Lat., "Continues: (3) Sciences." Cap. 49 of Liber Aleph. 7: Probably Grady Louis McMurtry, who became "Caliph" or acting head of O.T.O. many years later – WEH. 8: Louis Umfraville Wilkinson wrote under this pen name. He was one of two individuals named to be literary executors under Crowley's Last Will and Testament – WEH. Chapter LXXIII: "Monsters", Niggers, Jews, etc.Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Come now, is this quite fair? When I agreed to tip you off about Magick and the rest, I certainly never expected to be treated as if I were being interviewed by an American Sunday Newspaper. What do I prefer for breakfast, and my views on the future of the theatre, and is the Great White Brotherhood in favour of Eugenic Babies? No, dear sister—I nearly said sob-sister. But this I will say, you have been very artful, and led me on very cleverly—you must have been a terror to young men—for the matter of that, I dare say you are still! And I don't see how to get out of swallowing this last sly bait; as you say, "Every man and every woman is a star." does need some attention to the definition of "man" and "woman." What is the position, you say, of "monsters"? And men of vinferior" races, like the Veddah, Hottentot and the Australian Blackfellow? There must be a line somewhere, and will I please draw it? You make me feel like Giotto! There is one remark which I must make at the beginning. It's some poet or other, Tennyson or Kipling, I think (I forget who) that wrote: "Folks in the loomp, is baad." It is true all round. Someone wisely took note that the vilest man alive had always found someone to love him. Remember the monster that Sir Frederick Treves picked up from an East End peep-show, and had petted by princesses? (What a cunning trick!) Revolting, all the same, to read his account of it. He—the monster, not Treves!—seems to have been a most charming individual—ah! That's the word we want. Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities." As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow. It is peculiarly noticeable that when a class is a ruling minority, it acquires a detestation as well as a contempt for the surrounding "mob." In the Northern States of U.S.A., where the whites are overwhelming in number, the "nigger" can be more or less a "regular fellow;" in the South, where fear is a factor, Lynch Law prevails. (Should it? The reason for "NO" is that it is a confession of weakness.) But in the North, there is a very strong feeling about certain other classes: the Irish, the Italians, the Jews. Why? Fear again; the Irish in politics, the Italians in crime, the Jews in finance. But none of these phobias prevent friendship between individuals of hostile classes. I think that perhaps I have already written enough—at least enough to start you thinking on the right lines. And mark well this! The submergence of the individual in his class means the end of all true human relations between men. Socialism means war. When the class moves as a class, there can be no exceptions. This is no original thought of mine; Stalin and Hitler both saw it crystal-clear; both, the one adroitly, the other clumsily, but with equally consummate hypocrisy, acted it out. They picked individuals to rule under their autocracy, killed off those that wouldn't fit, destroyed the power of the Trades Unions or Soviets while pretending to make them powerful and prosperous, and settled down to the serious business of preparing for the war which both knew to be inevitable. It is this fundamental fact which ensures that every democracy shall end with an upstart autocrat; the stability of peace depends upon the original idea which aggrandized America in a century from four millions to a hundred: extreme individualism with opportunity. Our own longest period of peace abroad (bar frontier skirmishes like the Crimean war) and prosperity at home coincided with Free Trade and Laissez-faire. Now we may return, refreshed, to the main question of monsters, real (like Treves') or imaginary like Jews and niggers. 'Arf a mo! Haven't we solved the problem, ambulando? Everything would be okydoke and hunkydory if only we can prevent classes from acting as such? I suppose so. Then, what about a spot of pithy paradox for a change? Why should the classes want to act as classes? It's obvious; "Union is strength." The worst Fifteen can do more with a football than the best opposing team of one—excuse my Irish! Well, what tortoise is that elephant based upon? Why, still obviously, upon the universal sense of individual weakness. We all want a big bruvver to tell of him! Hence the Gods and the Classes. It's fear at the base of the whole pyramid of skulls. How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes. And so, whenever we find one Man who has no fear like Ibsen's Doctor Stockmann or Mark Twain's Colonel Grainger that strolled out on his balcony with his shotgun to face the mob that had come to lynch him, he can get away with it. "An Enemy of the People" wrote Ibsen, "Ye are against the people, O my chosen!" says The Book of the Law. (AL II, 25). Not only does it seem to me the only conceivable way of reconciling this and similar passages with "Every man and every woman is a star." to assert the sovereignty of the individual, and to deny the right-to-exist to "class-consciousness," "crowd-psychology," and so to mob-rule and Lynch-Law, but also the only practicable plan whereby we may each one of us settle down peaceably to mind his own business, to pursue his True Will, and to accomplish the Great Work. So never lose sight for a moment of the maxim so often repeated in one context or another in these letters: that fear is at the root of every possibility of trouble, and that "Fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure. Be thou therefore without fear; for in the heart of the coward virtue abideth not." Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 Chapter LXXIV: Obstacles on the PathCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Peccavi! And how! But my excuse is good, and I will try to make amends. First, a little counter-attack—your letter is so rambling and diffuse that at first I couldn't make out what you were getting at, and at last decided that it is much too random to reproduce, or even to deal with in detail. I shall simply formulate the case for the Prosecution, plead guilty, and appeal for clemency. The gravamen is that the Path of the Wise is gay with flowers, gilded with kiosks, and beset with snares; that every step is the Abode of Terror and Rapture—and all that! Yet I habitually write in the manner of a drunken dominie! You "gaped for Aeschylus, and got Theognis." I tempted you, it seems with The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz, its incomparable mystery and glamour, its fugitive beauty, its ineffable romance, its chivalry and its adventure, pellucid gleams as of sunlight under the sea, vast brooding wings of horror overshadowing the firmament, yet with strong Starlight constant overhead. And then I let you down!You did expect at least something of the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights; if not so high, of Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter; of Rabelais, Meinhold, de la Motte Fouqué; and the Morte d'Arthur in later times, of Balzac, Dumas, Lytton, Huysmans, Mabel Collins and Arthur Machen. You look at me with strange sad eyes: "But you, too, Master, have not you too led a life as strange, as glamourous, as weird and as romantic, as the best of them? Then why this cold detachment from that ambience?" Well, if you put it like that, I can only say that I feel at the same time more guilty and entirely innocent! For, while the charge is true, the defence is not to be shaken. The worst of all teachers are the Boloney Magnates, of whom I have already given some account. But the next worst are just exactly those who try to create an atmosphere of romance, and succeed only in a crude theatricalism. So, avoiding the swirling turmoil of Scylla, I have broken the ship on the barren rock Charybdis.1 Now let me hearten you, brave sister! All the old tales are true! You can have as many dragons, princesses, vampires, knights-errant, glendowers, enchanted apes, Jinn, sorcerers and incubi as you like to fancy, and—whoa Emma! did I tell you about Cardinal Newman? Well, I will. The one passage in his snivelling Apologia which impressed me was a tale of his childhood—before the real poet, lover and mystic had been buried beneath the dung-heap of Theology. He tells us that he read the Arabian Nights—in a heavily Bowdlerized edition, bet you a tosser!—and was enchanted, like the rest of us, so that he sighed "I wish these tales were true!" The same thing happened to me; but I set my teeth, and muttered: "I will make these tales true!" Well, I have, haven't I? You said it yourself! Let me be very frank about one point. It has always puzzled me completely why one is forbidden to relate certain of one's adventures. You remember, perhaps, in one of these letters I started out gaily to tell you some quite simple things—I couldn't, can't, see quite what harm could come of it—and I was pulled up sharp—yes, and actually punished, like a school-boy! I had often done much more impudent things, and nobody seemed to give a hoot. Oh somebody tell me why! The only suggestion that occurs to me is that I might somehow be "giving occasion to the enemy to blaspheme." Let it go at that! "Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!" Yes child, my deepest attitude is to be found in my life. I have been to most of the holy inaccessible places, and talked with the most holy inaccessible men; I have dared all the most dangerous adventures, both of the flesh and of the spirit; and I challenge the world's literature to match for sublimity and terror such experiences as those in the latter half of The Vision and the Voice. You understand, of course, that I say all this merely in indication; or rather, as I said before, as an appeal for clemency. On the contrary (you will retort) you are a mean cat (Felis Leo, please!) not to let us all in on the ground floor of so imposing a Cathedral! To atone? Not a catalogue, which would be interminable; not a classification, which would be impossible, save in the roughest terms; nothing but a few short notes, possibly an anecdote or so. Just a tickle or a dram of schnapps, to enliven the proceedings—ordeals—temptations—that sort of thing. A general Khabardar karo! With now and then a snappy Achtung! Oh, curse this mind of mine! I just can't help running to hide under the broad skirts of the Qabalah! It's Disk, Sword, Cup and Wand again! Sorry, but c'est trop fort pour moi. Disks. To master Earth, remember that the Disk is always spinning; fix this idea, get rid of its solidity. Commonly, the first tests of the young Aspirant refer to cash—"that's God's sol solid in this world." The proper magical attitude is very hard to describe. (I'm not talking of that black hen's egg any more; that is simple.) Very sorry to have to say it, but it is not unlike that of the spendthrift. Money must circulate, or it loses its true value. A banker in New York once told me that the dollar circulated nine times as fast as the English equivalent, so that people seemed to themselves to be nine times as rich. (I told you about the £100 note in a special letter on Money). But here I am stressing the spiritual effect; what happens is that anxiety vanishes; one feel that as it goes out, so it comes in. This view is not incompatible with thrift and prudence, and all that lot of virtues, far from it, it tucks in with them quite easily. You must practise this; there's a knack in it. Success in this leads to a very curious result indeed; not only does the refusal to count (Fourpen'north or Yoga, please miss, and Mum says can I have a penny if I bring back the bottle!), bring about the needlessness of counting, but also one acquires the power to command! A century ago, very nearly, there lived in Bristol and "Open Brother" names Muller, who was a wizard at this; Grace before breakfast, the usual palaver about the Lord and His blessings and His bounty et cetera, da capo; to conclude "and, Blessed Lord, we would humbly venture to remind Thee that this morning Thou art £3 4s. 6 1/2d. short in the accounts; trusting that Thou wilt give this small matter Thine immediate attention, for Jesus' Christ's sake, Amen." Sure enough, when he came to open his post, there would be just enough, sometimes exactly enough, to cover that amount. This story was told me by an enemy, who thought quite seriously that he would go to Hell for being "Open." ("Open" Brethren were lax about the Lord's Supper, let people partake who were not sound upon the Ramsgate Question; and other Theological Atrocities!) It meant that the facts were so undeniable that the "advertisement for Answer to Prayer" outweighed the "miracle by a heretic." I knew a poetess of great distinction who used to amuse herself by breaking off a conversation and saying, "Give me a franc" (or a shilling, or any small sum) and then going on with her previous remarks. She told me that of over a hundred people I was the second who had passed the coin to her without remark of any kind. This story—do you think?—is neither here no there. No, my remarks are rarely asyntartete. The Masters, at one stage or another of initiation—it is forbidden to indicate the conditions—arrange for some test of the Aspirant's attitude in some matter, not necessarily involving cash. If he fails, goodnight! Swords, now. The snags connected with this type of test are probably the nastiest of any. Misunderstanding, confusion, logical error (and, worse, logical precision of the kind that distinguishes many lunatics), dispersion, indecision, failure to estimate values correctly—oh!—there is no end to the list. So much so, indeed, that there is no specific critical test, it is all part of the routine, and goes on incessantly. Well, there is just one. Without warning a decision of critical importance has to be made by the candidate, and he is given so many minutes to say Yes or No. He gets no second chance. But I must warn you of one particular disgrace. You know that people of low mentality haunt fortune-tellers of equal calibre, but with more low cunning. They do not really want to know the future, or to get advice; their real object is to persuade some supposed "authority" to flatter them and confirm them in their folly and stupidity. It is the same thing with a terrifying percentage of the people that come for "teaching" and "initiation." The moment they learn anything they didn't know before, off they fly in a temper! No sooner does it become apparent that the Master is not a stupid middle-class prig and hypocrite—another edition of themselves, in short—they are frightened, they are horrified, they flee away on both their feet, like the man in the Bible! I have seen people turn fish-belly pale in the face, and come near fainting outright, when it has dawned upon them suddenly that magick is a real thing! It's all beyond me! Cups: we are much more definite again. The great test is so well known, and accounts have already been published, that it can be here plainly stated. Early in his career, the Aspirant is exposed to the seductions of a Vampire, and warned in due form and due season. "Sleep with A,B,C,D,E and F, my lad, and our hearty best wishes! But not with G on any account, on peril of your work!" So off he goes to G, without a second's hesitation. This test may be prolonged; the deadliness and subtlety of the danger has been recognized, and he may have half a dozen warnings, either direct or springing from his relations with her. And the penalty is not so drastically final; often he gets off with a term of penal servitude. On the other hand, the Aspirant who can spot at the first hint why the Masters think that particular woman a danger, and acts promptly and decisively as he should, is secretly marked down as a sword of very fine temper indeed! The rest of the Cup Ordeals consists for the most part of progressive estimations of the quality of the Postulant's devotion to the work; there is not, as a rule, anything particularly spectacular or dramatic in it. If you stick to your Greetings and Adorations and all such mnemonics, you are not likely to go very far wrong. Wands: this obviously a pure question of Will. You will find as you go on that obstacles of varying degrees of difficulty confront you; and the way in which you deal with them is most carefully watched. The best advice that I can give is to remember that there is little need of the Bull-at-a-Gate method, though that must always be ready in reserve; no, the best analogy is rapier-play. Elastic strength. Warfare shows us. That seems to cover your question more or less; but don't forget that it depends on yourself how much of the dramatic quality colours your Path. I suppose I have been lucky to have had the use of all the traditional trappings; but it is always possible to make a "coat of many colours" out of a heap of rags. To show you that you have had Chaucer and John Bunyan—yes, and Laurence Sterne: to bring up the rear, James Thomson (B.V.) to say nothing of Conrad and Hardy. Nor let me forget The Cream of the Jest and The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck of my friend, James Branch Cabell. So now, fair damozel, bestride thy palfrey, and away to the Mountains of Magick! Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 P.S. One danger I had purposely passed over, as it is not likely to come your way. But, since others may read these letters— Some, and these the men of highest promise, often of great achievement, are tempted by Treason. The acquire a "Judas-complex," think how splendid it would be if they were to destroy the Order—or, at the very least, unhorse the Master. This is, of course, absurd in itself, because if they had crossed the Abyss, they would understand why it is impossible. It would be like "destroying Electricity," or "debunking" the Venus of Milo. The maximum of success possible in such an operation would be to become a "Black-Brother;" but what happens in practice, so far as my own experience goes, is complete dispersion of the mental faculties amounting to suicide; I could quote no less than four cases in which actual physical self-murder was the direct result. 1: Editorial Q.—isn't this bas-akwards? WEH. [dancingstar digs his copy of Brewer's out from under a stack of Equinox reprints & starts flicking...] Yes – T.S. Chapter LXXV: The A\A\ and the PlanetCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. You Write:
My dear child, that is all very sensibly put; and the answer is that Convenience would decide. Then you go on, after a digression: "Then how are They acting at present? What impact has the new Word, Thelema, made upon the planet? What are we to expect as a result? And can we poor benighted outsiders help Them in any way? I know it's 'cheek' to ask." then turn the other cheek, and repeat the question! I will do my best to make it all clear. But do not forget that I am myself completely in the dark with regard to the special functions of most of my colleagues. To begin, then! Achtung! I am going to be hard-boiled; my first act is to enlist the Devil himself in our ranks, and take the Materialistic Interpretation of History from Karl Marx, and accept economic laws as the manifest levers which determine the fortune of one part of the earth or another. I shall take exception only by showing that these principles are secondary: oil in Texas, nitrates on the Pacific slope of the Andes, suphur in Louisiana (which put Etna's nose out of joint by making it cheaper for the burgers of Messina to import it from four thousand miles away instead of digging it out of their own back garden), even coal and timber, upset very few apple-carts until individual genius had found for these commodities such uses as our grandfathers never dreamed. The technical developments of almost every form of wealth are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War. In the "To-day and to-morrow" series is an essay called Ouroboros, by Garet Garrett; one of the most shrewd and deep-delving analysis of economics ever written. May I condense him crudely? Mass Production for profit fails when its markets are exhausted; so every effort is made to impose it not only on the native but the foreigner, and should guile fail, then force! But the process ineluctably goes on; when the whole world buys the nasty stuff, and will accept no other, the exploiter is still faced by diminishing returns. No possibility of expansion; sooner or later dividends dwindle, and the Business is Bust. To even the most stupid it becomes plain at this stage that war is wholly ruinous; organization breaks down altogether; one meaningless revolution follows another; famine and pestilence complete the job. Last time—when Osiris replaced Isis—the wreck was limited in scope—note that it was the civilized, the organized part that broke down. (Jews and Arabs could remain aloof, and keep a small torch burning until Light returned with the Renaissance.) This time there is no civilization which can escape being involved in the totality of the catastrophe. Towards this collapse all totalitarian movements inevitably tend. Bertrand Russell himself admits that, although himself "temperamentally Anarchistic," Society must be yet more organized than it is to-day if it is to exist at all. But his, as Garet Garrett shows, is the John Gilpin type of horsemanship. We are to-day more or less at the stage where "off flew Gilpin's hat and wig." Achievement of high aims, which tends ultimately to the well-being, the prosperity of the republic, depends on the proportion of masters to servants. The stability of a building depends on the proportion of superstructure to foundations. The rule holds good in every department of Nature. There is an optimum for every case. If there is one barber for ten thousand men, most of them will remain unshorn; if there are five thousand barbers, most of them will be out of a job. Apply this measure to society; there must be an optimum relation between industry and agriculture, between town and country. When the proper balance is not struck, the community must depend on outside help, importing what it lacks, exporting its surplus. This is an unnatural state of affairs; it results in business, and therefore ultimately in war. That is, as soon as the stress set up by the conditions becomes insupportable. So long as "business" is confined to luxuries, no great harm need result; but when interference with the flow of foreign trade threatens actual necessities, the unit concerned realizes that it is in danger of strangulation. Consider England's food supply! Switzerland, Russia, China, the U.S.A. can laugh at U-boats. England must support a Navy, a wealth-consuming, not a wealth-producing, item in the Budget. Similar remarks apply to practically all Government Departments. The minimum of organization is desirable; all artificial doctrinaire multiplication of works which produce no wealth is waste; and for many reasons (some absurd, like "social position") tend to create fresh unnecessary necessities. Ad infinitum, like the fleas in the epigram! When laws are reasonable in the eyes of the average man, he respects them, keeps them, does his best to maintain them; therefore a minute Police Force, with powers strictly limited, is adequate to deal with the almost negligibly small criminal class. A convention is laudable when it is convenient. When laws are unjust, monstrous, ridiculous, that same average man, will he-nill he, becomes a criminal; and the law requires a Tcheka or a Gestapo with dictatorial powers and no safeguards to maintain the farce. Also, corruption becomes normal in official circles; and is excused. I refer you to Mr. J. H. Thomas.* One evil leads to another; the seven devils always take possession of a house that is swept and garnished to he point at which people find it uncomfortable. * The Chancellor of the Exchequer, having fixed the increase of Income Tax at threepence, proceeded to defraud the Insurance Companies by insuring himself against a rise of the sum! But is not all this beside the point, you ask? No. It was needful to indicate this cumulative progression to social shipwreck, because, to-day an obvious peril of the most menacing, in 1904 no ordinary sane person foresaw anything of the sort. But special knowledge alters things, and it is certain that the Masters anticipated, with great exactness of calculation, the way things would go in the political world. Practically all the messages received during the "Cairo Working" (March-April 1904 e.v.) came to me through Ouarda. No woman ever lived who was more ignorant of, or less interested in, anything to do with politics, or the welfare of the race; she cared for nothing beyond her personal comfort and pleasure. When the communications ceased, she dropped the whole affair without a thought. She nearly always referred to the authors of these messages as "They:" when asked who "They" were, she would say haltingly and stupidly "the gods," or some equally unhelpful term. But she was always absolutely clear and precise as to the instructions. The New Aeon was to supersede the old; my special job was to preserve the Sacred Tradition, so that a new Renaissance might in due season rekindle the hidden Light. I was accordingly to make a Quintessence of the Ancient Wisdom, and publish it in as permanent a form as possible. This I did in The Equinox. I should perhaps have been strictly classical, and admitted only the "Publication in Class "A", "A-B", "B" and "D" material. But I had the idea that it would be a good plan to add all sorts of other stuff, so that people who were not in any way interested in the real Work might preserve their copies. This by the way: the essence this letter is to show that "They", not one person but a number acting in concert, not only foresaw a planet-wide catastrophe, but were agreed on measures calculated to assure the survival of the Wisdom worth saving until the time, perhaps three hundred or six hundred years later, when a new current should revive the shattered thought of mankind. The Equinox, in a word, was to be a sort of Rosetta Stone. There is one other matter of incomparable importance: the wars which have begun the disintegration of the world have followed, each at an interval of nine months, the operative publications of The Book of the Law. This again seems to make it almost certain that "They" not only know the future, at least in broad outline, but are at pains to arrange it. I have no doubt that the advance of Natural Science is in the charge of a certain group of "Masters." Even the spiritually and morally as well as the physically destructive phenomena of our age must be parts of some vast all-comprehensive plan. Putting two and two together, and making 718, it looks as if the Masters acquiesced in and helped to fulfill, the formula of the catastrophic succession of the Aeons. An analogy. We have the secret of the Elixir of Life, and could carry on in the same body indefinitely; yet at least some masters prefer to reincarnate in the regular way, only taking care to waste no time in Amennti, but to get back to the Old Bench and pick up the New Tools with the minimum of delay. By having attained the Freedom of "Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness" "we are blessed; and bless" by refusing to linger therein, but shouldering once more "Atlantean the load of the too vast orb of" the Karma of Mankind. This hypothesis does at least make intelligible Their action in riding for a fall instead of preventing it. It may also be that They feel that human progress has reached its asymptote so far as the old Formula can take it. In fact, unless we take some such view, there does not seem to be much point in taking an action so fundamentally revolutionary (on the surface) as the proclamation of a New Word. But then (you will object, if an objection it be) people like Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, the Mikado, et hoc genus omne, are loyal emissaries of the Masters, or the gods! Well, why not? An analogy, once more. In the Christian legend we find God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) employing Judas, Pilate and Herod, no less than Jesus, as actors in the Drama which replaced Isis by Osiris in the Great Formula. Perfectly true; but this fact does not in any way exculpate the criminals. It is no excuse for the Commandants of Belsen and Buchenwald that they were acting under orders. The Drama is not mere play-acting, in which the most virtuous man may play the vilest of parts. Your further objection, doubtless, will be that this theory makes the Masters responsible for the agony of the planet. I refer you to The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, Cp I, v. 33-40.
And again, Cp. I, v. 50-52 and v. 56-62.
Yes, I dare say. But is there not here a sort of moral oxymoron? Are not the Masters pursuing two diametrically opposed policies at the same time? Genius—or Initiation, which implies the liberation and development of the genius latent in us all (is not one of names of the "Holy Guardian Angel" the Genius?)—is practically the monopoly of the "crazy adventurer," as the official mind will most certainly rate him. Then why do not the Masters oppose all forms of organization tooth-and-nail? It depends, surely, on the stage which a society has reached on its fall to the servile state. Civilization of course, implies organization up to a certain point. The freedom of any function is built upon system; and so long as Law and Order make it easier for a man to do his True Will, they are admirable. It is when system is adored for its own sake, or as a means of endowing mediocrities with power as such, that the "critical temperature" is attained. It so happens that I write this on the eve of a General Election in England; and it seems to me that whichever wins, England loses: The Socialists openly proclaim that they mean to run the country on the lines of a convict prison; but the Tories, for all their fine talk, would be helpless against the Banks and the Trusts to whom they must look for support. Still, perhaps with a little help from Hashish, one can imagine a Merchant Prince or a Banker being intelligent, or even, in a weak moment, human; and this is not the case with officials. The standard, moreover, of education and Good Manners, low as it is, is less low in Tory circles. As I think that totalitarian methods are already on the way to extinguish the last spark of manly independence—that is, in self-styled civilized countries—it seems to me that we all should regard with shrewd suspicion any plans for "perfecting" social conditions. The extreme horror is the formula of the gregarious type of insect. Inherent in the premises is the impossibility of advance. One may sum the policy of the A.'. A.'. as follows:
"Ye-e-ss, I s-e-e." I doubt it. But what you are asking is how to decide upon your personal programme. The intelligent visitor from who knows what planet was puzzled. He chanced to have landed in England—to find a General Election in full blast. (The operative word is "blast".) They must be absolute imbeciles, was his first reaction, to risk upsetting the policy of Government with a first-class war on. (There would have been no need of such nonsense—I interrupted—if Parliament was elected by my simple plan. I'll give you the main idea; I don't insist on the figures. When a candidate is returned by 50 percent over his runner-up, he sits for five years. If forty percent, four years; and so on. An alternative—to "stagger" the assembly, as (I think) is done in the Senate of the United States.) How are you going to vote? Rather like the question of the dentist.1 The teeth can be tinkered: of course, sooner or later they have to go. Is it worth the trouble and expense? The Socialists would have them all out right away, and replaced by a set of "dentures," which (obviously) are perfect. Arrange them, change them, choose your own pattern; no trouble, no pain: all one's dream come true! But hardly biological. You may argue that convicts are examples of living individuals whose safety, shelter, nourishment and the rest are organized with the utmost care; but accidents will happen in the best-regulated "brown stone jugs." The one ideally automatic case is the foetus. You will agree that here is lack of initiative; in fact, its "True Will" is to escape, albeit into a harsh and hostile universe, fraught with unknown and incalculable dangers. As the Ritual says: "Prepare to enter the Immeasurable Region!"2 I think your decision should depend on how far caries has travelled on its road of destruction. I do not think that the Masters need be unanimous. A practical plan might be for them to concentrate on one particular group, or one part of the world, and to keep this in as good shape as possible until the time has come for Nature to grow a new set. They will be grown on a new Formula, to meet the new needs, just as when our "permanent" (Alas, not much!) set replace our milk-teeth. You ask me if I think this change can be made without bloodshed. No. The obscure autocrats of Diplomacy and Big Business are infinitely stupid and short-sighted; they cannot see an inch beyond their too often stigmatically shapen probosces, except where the profit of the next financial year is concerned. They live in perpetual panic, and shy at their own shadows. The accordingly attack even the most innocuous windmills in suicidal charges. Yes: bella, horrida bella, So, whichever way you vote, you are asking for trouble, or would do, if the vote had any meaning. The result of any election, or for the matter of that any revolution, is an almost wholly insignificant component of those stupendous and inscrutable Magical Forces which determine the destinies of the planet. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: Crowley suffered from bad teeth in his last years, finally having them extracted about six months before his death in 1947 e.v. It is speculated that secondary infection from the extraction may have contributed to his death from pneumonia in December of that year – WEH. 2: The quote is from the Golden Dawn Zelator ritual – T.S.
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