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MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS

Chapter XI: Woolly Pomposities of the Pious "Teacher"

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

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

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

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

So much for Buckingham!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the result of letting

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

in the end repay investigation.

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

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

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

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

1: Annie Besant, theosophist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cara Soror,

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

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

Actually, the answers are fairly simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And oh! how imperative this is!

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

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

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

Such doubts are dampers!

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

Here follow the quotations from The Vision and the Voice.

The Angel re-appears

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And for his Work thereafter?

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

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

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

And I said: What shall come unto him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Ibid. 13th Æthyr.)

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

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

(Ibid. 3rd Æthyr)

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

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

(Ibid. 3rd Æthyr)

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

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

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

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

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

And again:—

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

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

(Ibid. 7th Æthyr.)

Moreover, this also:

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

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

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

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

(Ibid. 12th Æthyr.)

Finally:

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

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

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

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

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

And he said:

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani.

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

(Ibid. 7th Æthyr.)

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

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

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

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

Cara Soror,

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

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

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

Let us begin at the beginning.  What is a Dramatic Ritual?  It is a celebration of the Adventures of the God whom it is intended to invoke. (The Bacchae of Euripides is a perfect example of this.)  Now, in the O.T.O., the object of the ceremonies being the Initiation of the Candidate, it is he whose Path in Eternity is displayed in dramatic form.

What is the Path?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lege!  Judica!  Tace!1

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

1: Lat., "Read!  Judge!  Be silent!"

Chapter XIV: Noise

Cara Soror,

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

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

I answer in one word: NOISE.

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

Sit still
Stop thinking
Shut up, and
Get out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a great success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

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

2: Winston Churchill – W.E.H.

Chapter XV: Sex Morality

Cara Soror,

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

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

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

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

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

1. To the physical side of it psychological laws apply.  "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw!" as John Wesley might have put it, though I doubt whether he did.
2. The "moral" side.  As in the case of the voltage of a cissoid, there isn't one.  Mind your own business! is the sole sufficient rule.  To drag in social, economic, religious, and such aspects is irrelevance and impurity.
3. The Magical side.  Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous. I have given a great many hints, especially in Magick, and The Book of Thoth—some of the cards are almost blatantly revealing; so I have been rapped rather severely over the knuckles for giving children matches for playthings.  My excuse has been that they have already got the matches, that my explanations have been directed to add conscious precautions to the existing automatic safeguards.

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

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

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

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

What is the damn thing, anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good night!

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

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

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