|
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS |
Chapter LXXXI: Method of TrainingCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. In your well-worn copy of the Bagh-i-muattar you have no doubt triply underlined that great verse: "Who hath the How is careless of the Why," which shows how cunning I was to induce you to put all your "why" questions first. But now let us get down to orichalc taques, as the Norman peasant might say. The first and absolutely essential task for the Aspirant is to write his Magical Record. You know some elementary Mechanics—the Triangle of Forces, and all that. Well, if we have a body acted on by two equal forces, one pulling it East, the other south, it will tend to move in a south-Easterly direction. But if the "south" force is (say) twice as strong, it will move south of South-East. Now you, sitting in your study reading this letter, got there and were compelled to do that, as the result of the impact upon you of countless quintillions of forces of every kind. I don't expect you to discover all these and calculate and report them; but I want you to set down all the main currents. For so you should be able to get some sort of answer to the question Where do we go from here, boys? I am not a guesser; and I cannot judge you, or advise you, or help you, unless and until I know the facts as thoroughly as you are able to allow me to do. The construction of this Record is, incidentally, the first step in the practice called Sammasati, and leads to the acquisition of the Magical Memory—the memory of your previous incarnations. So there is another reason, terrifically cogent, for writing this Magical Record as clearly and as fully as you can. This best explanation of how to set about the task is given in Liber Thisharb. Some of this sounds rather advanced and technical; but it ought to give you the general idea. You should begin with your parents and the family traditions; the circumstances of your birth and education; your social position; your financial situation; your physique, health, illnesses; your vita sexualis; your hobbies and amusements; what you are good at, what not; how you came to be interested in the Great Work; what (if you have been on false trails, Toshophists, Anthroposophagists, sham Rosicrucians, etc.) has been "your previous condition of servitude;" how you found me, and decided to enlist my aid. That, by itself, helps you to understand yourself, and me to understand you. From that point the keeping of the Record is quite easy. All you have to do is to put down what practices you mean to begin, how you get on with them from day to day, and (at intervals) what I have to say about your progress. Remember always that we have no use for piety, for vague chatter, for guesswork; we are as strictly scientific as biologists or chemists. We ban emotion from the start; we demand perception; and (as you will see later on) even perception is not acceptable until we have made sure of its bases by a study of what we call the "tendencies." That is all about the Magical Record; the way is now clear to set forth our Method. This is two-fold. (1) Yoga, introversion, (2) Magick, extroversion. (These are rough but useful connotations.) The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed; but, when you have advanced a little in both, you find that the concentration learnt in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga. Let me remark, by the way, that to my mind one of the greatest beauties, and most encouraging confirmations of the validity of our system, is the matchless harmony of its elements. Always, when we pursue any one path to its end, we find that it has become one with some other path which at the outset appeared utterly irreconcilable with it. ("Write down that the tearing apart is the crushing together" comes from an actual experience. See Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice, which teems with similar passages, and is itself an outstanding example of the unity of the Yogic and the Magical methods.) To study Yoga, you have my Book 4 Part I and my Eight Lectures on Yoga. Then there is Vivekananda's Raja Yoga and several little-known Hindu writers; these latter are very practical and technical, but one really needs to be a Hindu to make much use of them. The former is very good indeed, if your remember to switch off when he slides into sloppiness, which luckily is not often. To study Magick, Book 4, Parts II, III (Magick in Theory and Practice) and IV (The Equinox of the Gods.)1 Add The Book of Thoth and there you are:— "Being furnished with complete armour and armed, he is similar to the goddess.2 Of other writers, you have The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and any of the works of Eliphaz Lévi. But that's all. But—I suppose you knew all this long ago. It may help if I try to expound the essence of these two Methods in very simple language, and very different language. By contrast and comparison, you should be able, without reading even one of all those books, to get a perfectly clear idea in perspective of "what's coming to you!" The process of analysing, developing and controlling the mind is the essence of all Yoga practices. Magick explores and learns to control those regions of Nature which lie beyond the objects of sense. Reaching the highest parts of these regions, called the divine, one proceeds by the exaltation (? = intoxication? Yes, of a sublime sort) of the consciousness to identify oneself with those "celestial" Beings. In Yoga, various practices prevent the body and its functions from interrupting the mental process. Then, one inhibits that process itself: the stilling of "thoughts" allows one to become aware of men- tal functions beyond the intellectual; these functions have their own peculiar properties and powers. Each sheath, as one goes deeper, is discarded as "unreal;" finally one apprehends that nothing which is the only true and real form of existence. (But then it does not exist: in these regions of thought words always become nightmares of self- contradiction. This is as it should be.) In Magick, on the contrary, one passes through the veil of the exterior world (which, as in Yoga, but in another sense, becomes "unreal" by comparison as one passes beyond) one creates a subtle body (instrument is a better term) called the body of Light; this one develops and controls; it gains new powers as one progresses, usually by means of what is called "initiation:" finally, one carries on almost one's whole life in this Body of Light, and achieves in its own way the mastery of the Universe. The first step in Yoga is "Keep still." The first step in Magick is "Travel beyond the world of the senses." There, that is the whole business in a nutshell, and expressed so that anyone, however ignorant of the subject, may grasp the essentials (I hope). Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 Notes: 1: For the whole history of the conception and execution of the monsterpiece known as Book 4, see the editor's introduction to the 1994 and 1997 Samuel Weiser edition, Magick: Book 4 parts I-IV, popularly known as the "Blue Brick." Crowley had originally intended part IV, "ΘΕΛΗΜΑ—the Law" to comprise The Book of the Law and his final commentary thereon. Symonds and Grant erroneously identified it with the edition of the commentaries which they edited (Magical and Philsophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law, Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1974). The Equinox of the Gods was not designated as part of Book 4 on first publication, rather as Equinox vol. III no. 3; as far as I am aware, this letter of MWT is the first published reference to it as Book 4 part IV – T.S. 2: A quote from the Chaldæan Oracles, as cited by Proclus in Platonic Theology. Fragment 171 in the Westcott edition. The goddess in question is probably Hekaté. Johnston in Hekate Soteira renders it "For I have come, a goddess in full armour and with weapons," making Hekaté herself the speaker – T.S. Chapter LXXXII: Epistola Penultima: The Two Ways to RealityCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. How very sensible of you, though I admit somewhat exacting! You write—Will you tell me exactly why I should devote so much of my valuable time to subjects like Magick and Yoga. That is all very well. But you ask me to put it in syllogistic form. I have no doubt this can be done, though the task seems somewhat complicated. I think I will leave it to you to construct your series of syllogisms yourself from the arguments of this letter. In your main question the operative word is "valuable. Why, I ask, in my turn, should you consider your time valuable? It certainly is not valuable unless the universe has a meaning, and what is more, unless you know what that meaning is—at least roughly—it is millions to one that you will find yourself barking up the wrong tree. First of all let us consider this question of the meaning of the universe. It is its own evidence to design, and that design intelligent design. There is no question of any moral significance—"one man's meat is another man's poison" and so on. But there can be no possible doubt about the existence of some kind of intelligence, and that kind is far superior to anything of which we know as human. How then are we to explore, and finally to interpret this intelligence? It seems to me that there are two ways and only two. Imagine for a moment that you are an orphan in charge of a guardian, inconceivably learned from your point of view. Suppose therefore that you are puzzled by some problem suitable to your childish nature, your obvious and most simple way is to approach your guardian and ask him to enlighten you. It is clearly part of his function as guardian to do his best to help you. Very good, that is the first method, and close parallel with what we understand by the word Magick. We are bothered by some difficulty about one of the elements—say Fire—it is therefore natural to evoke a Salamander to instruct you on the difficult point. But you must remember that your Holy Guardian Angel is not only far more fully instructed than yourself on every point that you can conceive, but you may go so far as to say that it is definitely his work, or part of his work; remembering always that he inhabits a sphere or plane which is entirely different from anything of which you are normally aware. To attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is consequently without doubt by far the simplest way by which you can yourself approach that higher order of being. That, then, is a clearly intelligible method of procedure. We call it Magick. It is of course possible to strengthen the link between him and yourself so that in course of time you became capable of moving and, generally speaking, operating on that plane which is his natural habitat. There is however one other way, and one only, as far as I can see, of reaching this state. It is at least theoretically possible to exalt the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move on that exalted plane as it is for him. You should note, by the way, that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary. There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that. Personally I cannot accede to its axiom. The evidence for an external universe appears to me perfectly adequate. Still there is no extra charge for thinking on those lines if you so wish. I have paid a great deal of attention in the course of my life to the method of exalting the human consciousness in this way; and it is really quite legitimate to identify my teaching with that of the Yogis. I must however point out that in the course of my instruction I have given continual warnings as to the dangers of this line of research. For one thing there is no means of checking your results in the ordinary scientific sense. It is always perfectly easy to find a subjective explanation of any phenomenon; and when one considers that the greatest of all the dangers in any line of research arise from egocentric vanity, I do not think I have exceeded my duty in anything that I have said to deter students from undertaking so dangerous a course as Yoga. It is, of course, much safer if you are in a position to pursue in the Indian Jungles, provided that your health will stand the climate and also, I must say, unless you have a really sound teacher on whom you can safely rely. But then, if we once introduce a teacher, why not go to the Fountain-head and press towards the Knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel? In any case your Indian teacher will ultimately direct you to seek guidance from that source, so it seems to me that you have gone to a great deal of extra trouble and incurred a great deal of unnecessary danger by not leaving yourself in the first place in the hands of the Holy Guardian Angel. In any case there are the two methods which stand as alternatives. I do not know of any third one which can be of any use whatever. Logically, since you have asked me to be logical, there is certainly no third way; there is the external way of Magick, and the internal way of Yoga: there you have your alternatives, and there they cease. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 Chapter LXXXIII: Epistola UltimaCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The suggestion in your last letter to me is a very sensible one. I do think that people in general would like to get some idea of my system of training as a whole, in a comprehensive form. In the past there has been far too much of referring them to one quite unprocurable document and then to another which probably has not even been written. No wonder that they go away sorrowful. So I am going to put in as the last of this series of Letters an account, as clear and as succinct as the gods enable me to do, of what they may expect to have to do to get good marks from Grandfather. Of course I shall not be able to avoid altogether reference to the various official documents, but I will make these as short and as few as I can. First of all then, my system can be divided into two parts. Apparently diametrically opposed, but at the end converging, the one helping the other until the final method of progress partakes equally of both elements. For convenience I shall call the first method Magick, and the second method Yoga. The opposition between these is very plain for the direction of Magick is wholly outward, that of Yoga wholly inward. I will deal first then with Magick. How do I define this word? Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in accordance with the will. (Obviously then all scientific methods can be included in this term.) I have to assume in all that follows that you have thoroughly understood the doctrine of 0 = 2. All Magical action may be classed as under the formula of progression from the "0" to the "2"; in other words it is complete extraversion. The aspiring Magician only analyses himself for the purpose of finding new worlds to conquer. His first objective is the astral plane; its discovery, the classification of its tenants, and their control. All his early practises therefore are devoted to exploring the worlds which surround (if you choose, or if your prefer—are contained in) the object of sense. If there is a tree in your garden, you want to find out whether that tree is occupied by a nymph or a nat, and if so, what are they like? How do they act? How can you make them useful to your purpose? It is in fact the ordinary every-day scientific method of exploration. The only difference is that in the course of one's experiments one becomes aware of parts of the nature of the object to be examined which are subtler and perhaps more powerful, nearer to reality, than those which ordinary scientific examination discloses. You will notice, however, that the qualities above-mentioned are identical. The chemical elements which go to form a tree are subtler, more powerful and nearer to reality than the tree as it is presented to the senses. Finally, we reach the conception of molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons and so on, and nobody needs telling nowadays what unfathomable potencies lie hidden in the atom. When I say subtler, moreover, I mean it. The analysis of matter has resulted in the extraordinary discovery that the definition of matter as given by the physicist of to-day is very similar indeed to the definition of spirit as stated by the mystics of the middle ages. Henry Poincaré has well pointed out that the results of scientific experiment as we know them, are altogether in their way dependant on the existence of our own peculiar natures. If, for example, we had no sense to use in our exploration but that of hearing, we should have worked out a classification of trees entirely different from that which we now possess. We should have taught our students how to distinguish the sounds made by an oak and an elm respectively in a storm; the differences in the rustling of various kinds of grass, and so on. Similarly the results of our magical experiments are naturally and necessarily very distinct from those which we obtain by ordinary methods. To begin with we must build up an apparatus of examination, and this we do by discovering and developing qualities in our own structure which ware suitable for the purpose. The first step is the separation of (what we call, for convenience) the astral body from the physical body. As our experiments proceed, we find that our astral body itself can be divided into grosser and subtler components. In this way we become aware of the existence of what we call, for convenience, the Holy Guardian Angel, and the more we realise the implications of the theory of the existence of such a being, the clearer it becomes that our supreme task is to put ourselves into intimate communication with him. For one thing, we shall find that in the object of sense which we examine there are elements which resist our examination. We must raise ourselves to a plane in which we obtain complete control of such. It is found furthermore in the course of experiment that a great many of the apparent differences in our study conceal a hidden unity, and vice versa. Like every other science, both the subject and the object of the work increase as that work proceeds. Take a simple matter like Mathematics as our analogy. The schoolboy struggling with the Rule of Three is a very rudimentary image of the advanced mathematician working on the differential calculus. From the above it ought to be clear to you that I have said all that really needs to be said in explaining the whole of Magick as the science and art of extending, first in oneself, one's own faculties, secondly in external nature their hidden characteristics. Before closing the subject entirely I think it well to point out that there are quite a number of worlds on which a good deal of work remains to be done. In particular I cannot refrain from mentioning the work of Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly. My own work on this subject has been so elaborate and extensive that I shall never sufficiently regret that I never had an opportunity of completing it, but I should like to emphasize that the obtaining of a book like Liber 418 is in itself so outstanding an achievement that it should serve as an encouragement to all Magicians. In the case of many worlds, in particular that of Abra Melin, of the greater and lesser Keys of Solomon, of Pietro di Abano, of Cornelius Agrippa, while we have perfectly adequate information as to the methods we have very meagre examples of the results, especially so far as refers to the technical side of the work. I must conclude with a warning. So many of these branches of magick are so fascinating that any one of them is liable to take hold of the Magician by the short hair and upset his balance completely. It should never be forgotten for a single moment that the central and essential work of the Magicians is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Once he has achieved this he must of course be left entirely in the hands of that Angel, who can be invariably and inevitably relied upon to lead him to the further great step—crossing of the abyss and the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple. Anything apart from this course is a side issue and unless so regarded may lead to the complete ruin of the whole work of the Magician. IIThe second part of this letter, which appears to be expanding into a sort of essay, will be devoted to Yoga. You will have noticed that the grade of Master of the Temple is itself intimately associated with Yoga. It is when one reaches this plane that the apparently contradictory forms of the Great Work, Magick and Yoga, begin to converge, though even earlier in the course of the work it must have been noticed that achievements in Yoga have been of great assistance to magical operations, and that many of the mental states necessary to the development of the Magician are identical with those attained in the course of the strictly technical Yogic operations. The literature necessary to the study of Magick is somewhat variegated; there are quite a number of classics on the subject and though it would be easy enough for me to draw up a list of not more than half-a dozen which I consider really essential, there may be as many as an hundred which in the more or less subsidiary forms are useful to the magician. With Yoga the case is very different indeed. The literature on the subject is so enormous and contains so vast a number of more or less secret documents which circulate from hand to hand, that I believe that the best advice I can give anyone is to cut one's cloth very sparingly if one is to make a fitting suit. I do not think I am going too far if I say that Part I of Book 4 and my Eight Lectures on Yoga form an absolutely sufficient guide to the useful practise of the subject; anything else is almost certain to operate as a distraction. Swami Vivekananda summarised Yoga under four headings, and I do not think that one can improve on that classification. His four are: Gnana, Raja, Bhakti and Hatha, and comprise all divisions that it is desirable to make. As soon as one begins to add such sections as Mantra Yoga, you are adding to without enriching the classification, and once you begin where are you to stop? But I honestly believe that the excessive simplication given in Eight Lectures on Yoga is a practical advantage. Any given type of Yogas is the work of a lifetime and for that reason alone it is desirable to confine oneself from the beginning to an absolutely simple programme. What then is the difference between Yoga and Magick? Magick is extraversion, the discovery of and subsequently the classification of and finally the control of new worlds on new planes. So far as it concerns the development of the mind its object and method are perfectly simple. What is wanted is exaltation. The aim is to identify oneself with the highest essence of whatever world is under consideration. With Yoga you might easily slip into saying that it was identical, with the exception that the new worlds are from the start recognised as already existing within the human cosmos, but nobody is asked to extend these worlds in any way; on the contrary the object is to analyse ever more minutely, and the control to which one approaches is not external but internal. At all times one is concentrated on the idea of simpli- cation. The recognition of any new idea or form of ideas, is invariably the signal for its rejection: "not that, not that." One might simplify this explanation by constructing some sort of apophthegm; Magick is the journey from 0 to 2, Yoga from 2 to 0. It is a very good rule for the Yogi to keep this mind constantly fixed on the fact that any idea soever is false. There is actually a Hindu proverb "That which can be thought is not true." Consequently the existence of any idea in the mind is an immediate refutation of it, but equally the contraries as well as contradictory of that idea are false, and the result of this is to knock the second law of formal logic to pieces. One puts up a sort of sorites—A is B, therefore A is not B; therefore not A is not B; and all these contrary statements are equally false, but in order to realise this fact they must themselves be announced by the mind as ecstatic discoveries of truth. The result of all this naturally is that the mind very rapidly becomes a discredited instrument, and one attains to a totally different and much more exalted type of mind, and the same destructive criticism which one applied to the original consciousness applies equally to this higher consciousness, and one gets to one higher still which is again destroyed. In The Equinox, Vol. I there is an essay called "The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ?" In Liber Aleph too there are several chapters about attainment by what is called the Method of Ladders.2 All these operations are equally valid and equally invalid, and the result of this is that the whole subject of Yoga leads to constantly increasing confusion. The fineness of the analytical instrument seems to defeat its own purpose and it is perhaps because of that confession that I have always felt in my deepest consciousness that the method of Magick is on the whole less dangerous than that of Yoga. This is particularly the case when discussing these matters with a Western mind. It is true that our 0 = 2 formula remains infinitely useful because it is of such potency in destroying the scepticism which so often disheartens one, especially in the highest realms of The criticism which the enemy directs against your sun-kissed tower is thrown back from those glittering walls. You accept the criticism at the same time as you dismiss it with a laugh. On the whole therefore I continue to regard the discipline of Yoga as its most valuable feature. The results attained by pushing Yoga to its end are on their own showing worthless, whereas the attainment of Magick, however lofty, is still immune to all criticism and at every period of its construction has been perfectly sympathetic with the normal consciousness of man. On this view indeed, one might laughingly remark that Yoga at its best is a smoke-screen thrown out by a battleship in self-protection. It may seem to you strange as you read this letter to have watched how the pendulum has swung always a little more and more towards the side of Magick. I do not know why this should have been, but that it is so I have no doubt whatever. I see quite clearly now that Yoga from its very first beginnings is liable to lead the mind away into a condition of muddle, and though for each such state Yoga itself provides the necessary cure, may not one ask oneself if it is really wise to begin one's work with axioms and postulates which are inherently dangerous. The whole controversy might be expressed as a differential equation. Their curves become identical only at infinity, and there is no doubt, at least to my mind, that the curve of Magick follows a more pleasant track than that of Yoga. To take one point alone: it is evidently more satisfactory to have one's malignant demons external to oneself. As I have written it has become clearer to me that this is the case, but I should not like you to arise from its perusal with any idea that I have been in some way derogating Yoga I would not like to maintain that it is necessary to Magick because there have been many very great magicians who knew nothing at all of the subject but I am just as strongly convinced as I was before that the practice of Yoga in itself is of enormous assistance to the Magician in his more intelligible path, only adding that he should beware lest the logical antinomies inherent in Yoga divert him from or discourage him in his simple path. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 1: The reference is presumably to the law of non-contradiction, ~(A & ~A); or possibly to the law of Excluded Middle, (A v ~A) – T.S. 2: The reference is probably to the sequence of chapters Digamma-tau (177) to Digamma-omega (182) – T.S.
|