|
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS |
||||||||
Chapter XLI: "Are we Reincarnations of the Ancient Egyptians?"Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. That accursed conscience of mine has been pricking me ever since I dashed off that rather curt and off-hand letter card in answer to yours of the 18th. I had intended as a matter of fact to let you have the present coruscation as soon as I could get my secretary in the offing, but I thought I would snap your head off in the strength of your question as salutary chastisement. I do wish you would understand that all these speculations are not only idle and senseless because you cannot possibly verify their accuracy, but a deadly You ask if we, meaning, I suppose, the English, are now reincarnating the Egyptians. When I was a boy it was the Romans, while the French undertook the same thankless office for the Greeks. I say "deadly poison;" because when you analyse you see at once that this is a device for flattering yourself. You have a great reverence for the people who produced Luxor and the Pyramids; and it makes you feel nice and comfortable inside if you think that you were running around in those days as Rameses II or a high priest in Thebes or something equally congenial. You may say that I am myself the chief of sinners in this respect because of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, but this was not my doing. It was imposed upon me by The Book of the Law, and I do not feel particularly flattered or comforted by this identification. The only interest to me is the remarkable manner in which this is interwoven with the existence of the "Cairo working." Your second and third questions are still worse. I should be ashamed of myself if I were to do so much as to refer to them. That must serve for that. But your fourth question I did answer after a fashion. It has however struck me that I might have given you a more detailed instruction with advantage. When I was up the Mindoun Chong in Burma, I started an investigation of my dreams; and the only way to catch them was to write down as much as I could remember on waking, instantly. The result of doing this is rather surprising. To begin with, I discovered, especially as the practice progressed, that I was having many more dreams than I had previously supposed. This might have come about in either of two ways. (1) The practice might have actually increased my tendency to dream, and (2) the habit of observation may have brought dreams to the surface which would otherwise have gone unremarked. In either case the figures were quite definite. I found almost at once, that is to say after about a month, that practically every dream that I could remember, could be quite clearly ascribed to one of two causes: (a) the events of the previous day or days, or the subjects which had interested and excited me during that period, and (b) the physical conditions of the moment. For instance, a good deal of the time of the experiment I was sleeping in what might have been euphemistically called a houseboat. It was liable to leak; and on such occasions as I woke to find water trickling down my nose, I found that the dream from which I had wakened was an adventure of some sort in connection with water. (It is quite notorious, I believe, that many asthmatic subjects are pestered by dreams of having been guillotined in a previous incarnation. Alan Bennett, I may mention, was one such.) As the practice proceeds, you should find not only that your dreams increase in number per night, but also became very much fuller, clearer and more coherent. I assume that the reason is that the fact of your paying attention to them brings them to the surface. I am not quite sure whether this is a complete and adequate answer to your question 4, "How can I best bring my sleeping memory into my waking hours?" I have studied, and my secretary has studied, and we can make no head or tail of your remark about brain exercises with sketch. Well, I must hope for the best, and leave you with my blessing. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 Chapter XLII: This "Self" IntroversionCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. "...It is a lie, this folly against self...." (AL II, 22) The English is very un-English, and the context hardly helpful. But the meaning is clear enough; the idea is to dismiss, curtly and rudely, the entire body of doctrine which insists on altruism as a condition of spiritual progress. Why do I jump in with this text without warning. Because at the end of my letter on Sammasati the Dweller of the Threshold popped up, and that brings us to the Black Brothers, and the Left-hand path, all of which subjects are very generally supposed to depend for origin upon "Selfishness." This question is one of the most critical in the whole of Magical Theory; for in one sense it is certainly true that every error without exception is due to exacerbation of the Ego. Yet The Book of the Law flings at us disdainfully: "It is a lie, this folly against self." How then? I fear there is nothing for it but to go thoroughly into the whole matter of the "self." This may involve some recapitulation; but then didn't the Buddha repeat three times every one of those extravagantly verbose paragraphs which give the luckless Bhikku—timens, not tumens, as Catullus says—permission to have (a) walls (b) roof (c) window (d) door (e) hinge to door (f) fastening to door (g) h, and c.1—no, he didn't! anyhow, all those ancient conveniences? "Self" is one of the trickiest words afloat. Skeat gives merely the equivalents, all practically the same in sound, in various Nordic languages; he doesn't say where it comes from, or what it means. I don't know either, bless your heart! Latin and Greek don't help us at all; and when we try Eastern languages, it seems, dimly, to give the idea of the Ego, whatever that may be. Or perhaps "that combination which is unified by Ahamkara, the "Ego-making faculty." Decidedly not illuminating! One can't use the word as an ordinary noun. Skeat doesn't even label it as such. One can hardly say: Mr. Blenkinsop's self is good, or rheumatic, or gone for a walk. It makes nonsense. Yet Philosophy has picked out this hapless Tetragrammaton, and made endless mud pies with it! When one says: "I fell and hurt myself", it's only a conventional abbreviation. One means "my nose," or "my elbow," as the case may be! No, I can't conscientiously admit it as a noun. More accurately: "my body fell, and I am suffering from the injury thereby caused to my whatever it was." And so what? (Oh dear, I am tying ourselves into knots!) So what? Ah me, nothing for it but to plunge head foremost into the hybrid abyss of Babu-Blavatsky bak-abak! Brahman—don't confuse with the Brahma of the Trimurti, so so many Nippies and Clippies are but too liable to do—is the macrocosmic Negative Absolute, when cross-examined; its microcosm is Purusha or Atma. Very near our own Qabalistic Zero—Nought in no dimensions—equals Infinity (air connu). Then comes Buddhi, which curates, bookmakers' clerks, miners and Privy Councillors so often mistake for Buddha (Ha! Ha!), the faculty of discrimination. Pretty much like the 0 = 2 equation in our system. Next, the Higher Manas, which is our Neschamah, as near as a toucher; and the Lower Manas, which, as every Lovely and Cutie well Knows, is our Ruach. The rest of the Hindu system can easily be fitted in. Note, however, the Ahamkara, usually translated "Ego-making faculty," which collects what it can from this dump, and labels it "I." There seems not much point in elaborating all this. The Hindu Pandit is a whale for swallowing numberless oceans, all swarming with Jonahs; he duplicates and discriminates and invents at his own sweet will, in order to get a pretty pattern with 84 or 108 crores of asankyas of lakhs of anythings. We have done enough for honour. Enough if we see that the system is in its essence identical with our own. Well, then, what is this "Higher Self" that you roll out upon me? Actually, we are very far from being out of the wood. This Ut, of Udgitha, who looms so large in the Upanishads; the God peculiar to yourself, who appears in one of the Darshanas; some Individual constructed from the material listed above; are these all one? If not, is the difference between them more than a quibble? Really, all these speculations are based on à priori considerations; we had better drop the whole argument as little better than a waste of time; nay, as worse, for it encourages one in loose thinking, and especially in clinging to names which have no counterpart in things. There is only one point of theory which matters to our practice. We may readily concur that the Augoeides, the "Genius" of Socrates, and the "Holy Guardian Angel" of Abramelin the Mage, are identical. But we cannot include this "Higher Self"; for the Angel is an actual Individual with his own Universe, exactly as man is; or, for the matter of that, a bluebottle. He is not a mere abstraction, a selection from, and exaltation of, one's own favorite qualities, as the "Higher Self" seems to be. The trouble is (I think) that the Hindu passion for analysis makes them philosophize any limited being out of existence. This matter is of importance, because it influences one's attitude to invocation. I can, for instance, work myself up to a "Divine Consciousness," in which I can understand, and act, as I cannot in my normal state. I become "inspired;" I feel, and I express, ideas of almost illimitable exaltation. But this is totally different from the "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel," which is the special aim of the Adeptus Minor. It is ruin to that Work if one deceives oneself by mistaking one's own "energized enthusiasm" for external communication. The parallel on the physical plane is the difference between Onanism and Sexual Intercourse. Probably, my reason for insistence on this point is my antipathy to introversion in any form. The "mystic path" itself is packed with dangers. Unless the strongest counter-irritants are exhibited, the process is almost certain to become morbid. It is only one step from the Invocation of Zeus, or Apollo, or Dionysus, which does demand identification of oneself with the object of one's worship, to a form of self-worship which soon develops into a maniacal exacerbation of the Ego; and if one persists in this involuted curve, one becomes a "Black Brother," or departs for the local loony-bin. Invocations of even the most positive Gods are dangerous, unless care can be taken to keep the personality of the god distinct from one's own. Athene is a superb deity; but one does not want to be nothing but Athene, except in that supreme moment of Samadhi with Her which is the climax of the invocation. Do you remember one of Barbey d'Aurevilly's Contes Cruels about a Spanish nobleman who anticipated one of the privileges of marriage instead of waiting for ecclesiastical licence? The Inquisitor simply had him tied to his betrothed for 48 hours. It is really rather like that! One of my mathematically-minded disciples—J.W.N. Sullivan, I think—told me that his sinister science had one peculiarly devilish pitfall; one is so satisfactorily equipped for work if one had but a bit of paper and a pencil—and a comfortable bed! He had to make a point of severe physical exercise to escape becoming bed-ridden in his early twenties! So, even in divine invocation, one should insist on definite communication of knowledge (or what not) which is incontestably not one's own. The fact that the self-begotten feelings and ideas are so eminently satisfactory—naturally, since there is nobody to oppose them—is damnably seductive. Once started on that road, one can easily develop self-deception to a fine art. One can imagine that one has undergone, or achieved, all sorts of experiences "as described in the books," when all that one has actually done is to work the results of one's reading into a bubble inflated by imagination. It should be obvious to you that the habit grows on one; every bad quality, from vanity to laziness, lends most willing aid. One replaces reality more and more continuously by these exciting and flattering reveries, which by this time have no longer any shadow of a claim to be called mystic experiences at all. It is desperately difficult to cure such conditions; the patient resents bitterly every touch of truth, for he feels it, accurately enough, as a thrust to the very core of his being. Parallel with this, in my psychoanalytic practice I have had excellent success with all forms of sexual aberration, with the one exception of masturbation. In these cases, even though I have often been successful in "curing" the condition, so that the man has been able to carry on with satisfaction to himself and his family the normal functions of a husband, I have never really got rid of the peculiar mental and moral characteristics which have been, if not implanted, at least encouraged and fostered, by this devastating habit. Now do remember this; it is the guarantee of wholesomeness in any Invocation that there should be contact with another. It is better to conjure up the most obnoxious demons from the most noisome pit of Hell than to take one's own exhilarations for Divine benediction; if only because there was never a demon yet so atrocious as that same old Ego. You will discover the truth of these remarks when you approach the Frontier of the Abyss. Well, now, if that isn't too funny! The text of this stupendous sermon was AL II, 22. I take this verse in its most obvious and ordinary sense; for instance, the following sentence: "... The exposure of innocence is a lie. ..."; for that means clearly enough Hypocrisy. So "... It is a lie, this folly against self. ..." only means, "To hell with sentimental altruism, with false modesty, with all those most insidious fiends, the sense of guilt, of shame—in a word, the 'inferiority complex' or something very like it." The whole tenor of The Book of the Law, is to this effect. The very test of worth is that one should be aware of it and not afraid to sock the next man on the jaw if he disputes it! Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 P.S. But what do I mean when I say "myself" in normal speech? I mean Tiphareth, the human self as determining the identity of the Supreme Triad plus as much Ruach as I have succeeded in organising as extensions of it. Though your Supernal Triad is in essence identical with mine, your Tiphareth is quite definitely not mine. It is like mine in its nature and many of its sympathies, but your Ruach is altogether different from mine in (at a guess) 80% of its components. We must add Malkuth as the medium which crystallizes the characters of our respective "Selves." This is all horribly, hatefully difficult to put into words; there is bound to be misunderstanding, however cleverly I concoct the potion. But we understand pretty well for all that, at least so far as is necessary for most practical purposes. Note: The original key-entry also contained a transcription of a handwritten note which was made completely unintelligible by a number of omissions, either of illegible words or of symbols which could not be rendered in ASCII. It ran thusly: {The following note in handwriting may be a proper element of the text. This
will be cross-check from available materials:}
* 0 = 2 Because 2 comes from 0 --- itself is .... ---
2 High ... issue from Kether the Crown
under ..... ....... the Book of Thoth.
thus Nuit ... ... Hadit --- and as you
said yourself, ... she .... --- never
There may be a reference to AL II, 4 in the last few words.. 1: Probably "heroin and cocaine" – T.S. Chapter XLIII: The Holy Guardian Angel is not the "Higher Self" but an Objective IndividualCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. On going over some recent letters I see that you question abut William Gillette and the Angels was indeed "a red-hot two-prong that you stick to hiss i' the soft of" me. You meant not only to inquire into the order of being to which angels belong, but as to whether they are liable to accident, misfortune and the like. The answer is that it depends on the Angel—for the purposes of this letter I propose to use the word "angel" to include all sorts of disembodied beings, from demons to gods—in all cases, they are objective; a subjective "angel" is different from a dream only in non-essentials. Now, some angels are actually emanations of the elements, planets, or signs to which they are attributed. They are partial beings in very much the same way as are animals. They are not microcosms as are men and women. They are almost entirely composed of the planet (or what- ever it is) to which they are attributed. The other components of their being I take to be almost accidental. For example, the Archangel Ratziel is lord of a company of angels called Auphanim; and one must not imagine that all these angels are identical with one another, or there would not seem to be much sense in it. They have some sort of composition, some sort of individuality; and the character and appearance of the Angel can be determined by its name. I do not think that I have anywhere mentioned how this is done. To take an example, let us have Qedemel—the Hebrew letters as Q.D.M.A.L, and the numeration is 175, which is that of the sum of the 1st 49 numbers, as is proper to Venus.1 We may then expect the head or head-dress of the spirit to be in some way characteristic of the Sign of Pisces. The general form of the body will be indicated by the Daleth, the letter of Venus, and the lower part (or perhaps the quality) will be determined by the watery Mem—The termination Aleph Lamed is usually taken to indicate appropriate symbols. For instance, the Aleph might show a golden aura, and the Lamed a pair of balances. Some further detail might be indicated by taking the letters Daleth and Mem together, for Dam is the Hebrew word for blood. From such considerations one can build up a pictorial representation in one's mind which may serve as a standard to which any appearance of him should more or less conform.2 The question then takes the form of inquiry into how far such beings are immortal or eternal. In the above case, evidently his existence depends on that of the planet Venus; and one might suppose that, if that planet were stricken from the solar system, there would be no more Qedemel. But this is to judge too rashly; for Venus himself is only an emanation of the number 7, and is therefore indestructible. {Handwritten note: Because she-he comes from ... who is [triangle] + [square], 3 + 4} It is some such idea as the above which is at the back of the conventional idea that elementals are immortal, that they incur mortality when their ambition and devotion causes them to incarnate as human beings. (Is this achieved by some sort of marriage with a reincarnating Ego? Or how? All this is very obscure; we need more evidence.) You will doubtless have read in many Eastern stories of the destruction of dryads or Nats by the cutting down of the tree in which they have made their habitation. A nymph, similarly, would be destroyed if her fountain were to dry up. Now, can an angel of this sort ever go wrong, by which one must mean, can he ever be untrue to his own nature? I do not see how one can imagine this to happen; for they are so completely creatures of the elements of which they are composed that they must be regarded as completely devoid of will in any intelligible sense of the word. Their actions in fact are merely re-actions. They are, of course, entirely lacking in the Supernal Triad. There is therefore no question of anything in them which would persist through change. Perhaps it would be better to say that changed does not really affect them. Another way to put it would be that they are adjectives, not nouns. They are merely sensible manifestations of the elements to which they are attributed, and to the letters of their name. Now, on the other hand, there is an entirely different type of angel; and here we must be especially careful to remember that we include gods and devils, for there are such beings who are not by any means dependent one one particular element for their existence. They are microcosms in exactly the same sense as men and women are. They are individuals who have picked up the elements of their composition as possibility and convenience dictates, exactly as we do ourselves. I want you to understand that a goddess like Astarte, Astaroth, Cotytto, Aphrodite, Hathoor, Venus, are not merely aspects of the planet;* they are separate individuals who have been identified with each other, and attributed to Venus merely because the salient feature in their character approximates to this ideal. Now then, it is simple to answer the question of their development, their growing old and dying; for, being of the same order of Nature as we are ourselves, almost anything which is true of us is true also of them. * "Venus" is, of course, a "thing-in-itself;" the planet merely one case of the idea. I have tended rather to elaborate this theme, because of the one personally important question which arises in more recent letters; for I believe that the Holy Guardian Angel is a Being of this order. He is something more than a man, possibly a being who has already passed through the stage of humanity, and his peculiarly intimate relationship with his client is that of friendship, of community, of brotherhood, or Fatherhood. He is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term "Higher Self" implies "a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion." It it were not so, there would be no point in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. Apart from any theoretical speculation, my Sammasiti and analytical work has never led to so much as a hint of the existence of the Guardian Angel. He is not to be found by any exploration of oneself. It is true that the process of analysis leads finally to the realization of oneself as no more than a point of view indistinguishable in itself from any other point of view; but the Holy Guardian Angel is in precisely the same position. However close may be the identities in millions of ways, no complete identification is ever obtainable. But do remember this, above all else; they are objective, not subjective, or I should not waste good Magick on them. Let me say in particular in regard to Gods, that the God Jupiter whom you invoke is not necessarily the same as he whom I invoke. It is clear in any case that the revelation of himself to you is modified in many ways by your own particular sensitiveness; just as in ordinary life, your idea of a friend may be very different from my own conception of the same individual. Suppose, for example, he happens to be a musician, there will be an entire side of his character to which I am practically insensitive. You could talk to him for hours, and I would understand little or nothing of what was said. Similarly, if he were a mountaineer, it would be your turn to be odd man out. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: Sic. The sum of the first forty-nine natural numbers is 1225 which is thus the fourth "magic number" of Venus; 175 is the third, being 1225 ÷ 7, hence the sum of the numbers on each row of the "magic square" of Venus – T.S. 2: This is basically Golden Dawn teaching, with slight elaborations by Crowley – T.S. Chapter XLIV: "Serious" Style of A.C., or the Apparent Frivolity of Some of my RemarksCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Alas! It is unlikely that either you or I should come upon a copy of Max Beerbohm's portrait of Mathew Arnold; but Raven Hill's famous cartoon is history, and can be told as such without the illustration. We shall have to go into the matter, because of your very just criticism of my magical writings in general—and these letters, being colloquial, are naturally an extreme case. Far-off indeed those sunny days when life in England was worth living; when one could travel anywhere in Europe—except Russia and Turkey, which spiritually, at least, are in Asia—or America, without a pass- port; when we complained that closing time was twelve-thirty a.m.; when there was little or no class bitterness, the future seemed secure, and only Nonconformists failed to enjoy the fun that bubbled up on every side. Well, in those days there were Music-halls; I can't hope to explain to you what they were like, but they were jolly. (I'm afraid that there's another word beyond the scope of your universe!) At the Empire, Leicester Square, which at that time actually looked as if it had been lifted bodily from the "Continong" (a very wicked place) there was a promenade, with bars complete (drinking bars, my dear child, I blush to say) where one might hope to find "strength and beauty met together, Kindle their image like a star in a sea of glassy weather." There one might always find London's "soiled doves" (as they revoltingly called them in the papers) of every type: Theodora (celebrated "Christian" Empress) and Phryne, Messalina and Thais, Baudelaire's swarthy mistress, and Nana, Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill. But the enemies of life were on guard. They saw people enjoying themselves, (shame!) and they raked through the mildewed parchments of obsolete laws until they found some long-forgotten piece of mischief that might stop it. The withered husks of womanhood, idle, frustrated, spiteful and malignant, called up their forces, blackmailed the Church into supporting them, and began a senseless string of prosecutions. Notable in infamy stands out he name of Mrs. Ormiston Chant. So here we had the trial of some harmless girl for "accosting;" it was a scene from this that inspired Raven Hill's admirable cartoon. A "pale young curate" is in the witness box. "The prisoner," he drawled "made improper proposals to me. The actual words used were: "why do you look so sad, Bertie?'" The magistrate: "A very natural question!" Now, fifty years later, here am I in the dock. ("How can you expect people to take your Magick seriously!" I hear from every quarter, "when you write so gleefully about it, with your tongue always in your cheek?") My dear good sister, do be logical! Here am I who set out nigh half a century ago to seek "The Stone of the Wise, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness:" I get it, and you expect me to look down a forty-inch nose and lament! I have plenty of trouble in life, and often enough I am in low enough spirits to please anybody; but turn my thoughts to Magick—the years fall off. I am again the gay, quick, careless boy to whom the world was gracious. Let this serve for an epitaph: Gray took eleven years; I, less. Elegy Written in a Country FarmyardBy
In all the active moods of Nature—her activity is Worship! there is an element of rejoicing; even when she is at her wildest and most destructive. (You know Gilbert's song "When the tiger is a-lashing of his tail"?) Her sadness always goes with the implied threat of cessation—and that we know to be illusion. There is nothing worse in religion, especially in the Wisdom-Religion, than the pedagogic-horatory accents of the owlish dogmatist, unless it be the pompous self-satisfaction of the prig. Eschew it, sister, eschew it! Even in giving orders there is a virile roar, and the commander who is best obeyed is he who rages cheerfully like an Eights Coach or a Rugger Captain. "Up Guards and at 'em!" may not be authentic; but that is the right spirit. The curate's twang, the solemnity of self-importance, all manners that do not disclose the real man, are abominations, "Anathema Maranatha"—or any other day of the week. These painted masks are devised to conceal chicanery or emptiness. The easy-going humorous style of Vivekananda is intelligible and instructive; the platitudinous hot potatoes of Waite are neither. The dreadful thing is that this assumption of learning, of holiness, of mysterious avenging powers, somehow deceives the average student. He does not realise how well and wisely such have conned Wilde's maxim: "To be intelligible is to be found out." I know that I too am at times obscure; I lament the fact. The reason is twofold: (a) my ineradicable belief that my reader knows all about the subject better than I do myself, and (at best) may like to hear it tackled from a novel angle, (b) I am carried away by the exultant exaltation of my theme: I boil over with rapture—not the crystal-clear, the cool solution that I aimed at. On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there. Against this risk we look to our insurance; there are two infallible: Common Sense and the Sense of Humour. When you are lying exhausted and exenterate after the attainment of Vishvarupadarshana it is all wrong to think: "Well, now I'm the holiest man in the world, of course with the exception of John M. Watkins;" better recall the words of the weary sceptical judge in A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock; he makes a Mantram of it! "I put it to you—I put it to you—I put it to you—that you have got a boil on your bottom." To this rule there is, as usual with rules, an exception. Some states of mind are of the same structure as poetry, where the "one step from the sublime to the ridiculous" is an easy and fatal step. But even so, pedantry is as bad as ribaldry. Personally, I have tried to avoid the dilemma by the use of poetic language and form; for instance, in AHA! It is all difficult, dammed difficult; but if it must be that one's most sacred shrine be profaned, let it be the clean assault of laughter rather than the slimy smear of sanctimoniousness! There, or thereabouts, we must leave it. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and I cannot sing the words of an epithalamium to the music of a dirge. Besides, what says the poet? "Love's at its height in pure love? Nay, but after When the song's light dissolves gently in laughter." Oh! "One word more" as Browning said, and poured forth the most puerile portentous piffle about that grim blue-stocking "interesting invalid," his spouting wife. Here it is, mercifully much shorter, and not in tripping trochees! "Actions speak louder than words." (I positively leak proverbs this afternoon—country air, I suppose): and where actions are the issue, devil a joke from Aleister! Do you see what is my mark? It is you that I am going to put in the dock about "being serious;" and that will take a separate letter—part of the answer to yours received March 10th, 1944 and in general to your entire course of conduct since you came to me—now over a year ago.1 Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally yours, 666 1: See Chapter XLV. Chapter XLV: "Unserious" Conduct of a PupilCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Here pops us Zola again—this time he says J'Accuse! Today's Hexagram for me is No. X. Lî, the Tiger: and the Duke of Chau comments on the last line as follows: "The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at the whole course that is trodden, and examine the presage which that gives. If it be complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune." O.K.; Let's! It is now well over a year since you came to me howling like a damned soul in torment—and so you should be!—and persuaded me to take you as my pupil. What have you done with that year?
First, suppose we put down what you agreed to do: The essential preliminaries of the work of the A.'. A.'.—you are to be heartily congratulated upon your swift perception that the principles of that august body were absolute.
Have you in thirteen months done as much as honest work would have accomplished in a week? No.
What excuses do you drag out, when taxed with these misdemeanors? You are eager to make appointments to be received in audience; then you break them without warning, explanation, apology or regret. You are always going to have ample time to devote to the Great Work; but that time is always somewhere after the middle of next week. If you put half as much enthusiasm into what you quite rightly claim to be the most important factor in life as other old ladies do into Culbertson Contract, you might get somewhere. What you need, in the way of a Guru, is some fat, greasy Swami, who would not allow you to enter or leave his presence without permission, or address him without being formally invited to do so. After seven years at menial household drudgeries, you might with luck be allowed to listen to some of his improving discourse. Pretentious humbug is the only appeal to which you can be relied on to respond. Praxiteles would repel you, unless you covered the marble completely with glittering gew-gaws, tinsel finery, sham jewels from the tray of Autolycus! Yet it was precisely because you were sick of all this that you came to me at all. How can one take you as a serious student? Only because you do have moments when the scales fall from your eyes, and your deep need tears down the tawdry counterfeits which hide the shrine where Isis stands unveiled—but ah! too far. You must advance. To advance—that means Work. Patient, exhausting, thankless, often bewildering Work. Dear sister, if you would but Work! Work blindly, foolishly, misguidedly, it doesn't matter in the end: Work in itself has absolute virtue. But for you, having got so far in this incarnation, there must be a revolution. You must no longer hesitate, no longer plan; you must leap into the dark, and leap at once. "The Voice of my Higher Soul said unto me: Let me enter the Path of Darkness; peradventure thus I may attain the Light."1 Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally yours, 666 P.S. Let me adduce an example of the way in which the serious Aspirant bends to the oar. This is not boasting as if the facts denoted superlative excellence; they speak. The only comment is that if such conduct is not normal and universal, it ought to be. Yet no! I would add this: that I have not yet heard of anyone who has attained to any results of importance who does not attribute his success to devotion of quite similar quality. Here they are: 1. The Cloud on the Sanctuary. On reading this book, Mr. X.,2 who was desperate from the conviction that no success in life was worth a tinker's dam, decided: "This is the answer to my problem; the members of the Secret Fraternity which this book describes have solved the riddle of life. I must discover them, and seek to be received amongst them." 2. X., hearing a conversation in a café which made him think that the speaker3 might be such an one as he sought, hunted him down—he had gone on his travels—caught him, and made him promise an interview at the earliest possible date. 3. This interview leading to an introduction to the Fraternity, he joined it, pledging his fealty. But he was grievously shocked, and nearly withdrew, when assured: "There is nothing in this Oath which might conflict in any way with your civil, moral or religious obligations." If it was not worth while becoming a murderer, a traitor, and an eternally damned soul, why bother about it? was his attitude. The Head of the Fraternity4 being threatened with revolt, X. when to him, in circumstances which jeopardised his own progress, and offered his support "to the last drop of my blood, and the last penny of my purse." Deciding to perform a critical Magical Operation,5 and being warned that serious opposition might come from his own friends, family, etc., he abandoned his career, changed his name, cut himself off completely from the past, and allowed no alien interest of any sort to interfere with his absorption in the Work. His journey to see the Head seemed at that time a fatal interruption; at the least, it involved the waste of one whole year. He was wrong; his gesture of setting the interests of the Order before his personal advancement was counted unto him for righteousness.
There should be no need to extend this list; it could be continued indefinitely. X. had one rule of life, and one only; to do whatever came first on the list of agenda, and never to count the cost. Because this course of conduct was so rigidly rational, it appeared to others irrational and incalculable; because it was so serenely simple, it appeared an insoluble mystery of a complexity utterly unfathomable! But—I fear that you are only too likely to ask—is not this system (a) absurd, (b) wrong, as certain in the long run to defeat its own object. Well, as to (a), everything is absurd. The Universe is not constructed to gratify the mania of "social planners" and their tedipus kind. As to (b), there you said something; the refutation will lead us to open a new chapter. Ought not X. to have laid down a comprehensive scheme, and worked out the details, so that he would not break down half-way through for lack of foresight and provision for emergencies? An example. Suppose that the next step in his Work involved the sacrifice of a camel in a house in Tooting Bec, furnished in such fashion as his Grimoire laid down, and that the purchase of the house left him without resources to buy that furniture, to say nothing of the camel. What a fool! No, that does not necessarily follow. If the Gods will the End, They also will the means. I shall do all that is possible to me by buying the house: I shall leave it to Them to do Their share when the time comes. This "Act of Truth" is already a Magical Formula of infallible puissance; the man who is capable of so thinking and acting is far more likely to get what he wanted from the Sacrifice—when at long last the Camel appears on the premises—then he who, having ample means to carry out the whole Operation without risk of failure, goes through the ceremony without ever having experienced a moment's anxiety about his ability to bring it to a successful conclusion. It think personally that the error lies in calculating. The injunction is "to buy the egg of a perfectly black hen without haggling." You have no means of judging what is written in Their ledger; so "...reason is a lie; ... & all their words are skew-wise...." AL II, 32. Let me add that it is a well-attested fact of magical experience—beginning with Tarquin and the Sibylline books!—as well as a fact of profane psychology, that if you funk a fence, it is harder next time. If the boy falls off the pony, put him on again at once: if the young airman crashes, send him up again without a minute's avoidable delay. If you don't, their nerve is liable to break for good and all. I am not saying that this policy is invariably successful; your judgment may have misled you as to the necessity of the Operation which loomed so large at the moment. And so on; plenty of room for blunders! But it is a thousand times better to make every kind of mistake than to slide into the habit of hesitation, of uncertainty, of indecision. For one thing, you acquire also the habit of dishonourable failure; and you very soon convince yourself that "the whole thing is nonsense." confidence comes from exercise, from taking risks, from picking yourself up after a purler; finding that the maddest gambles keep oncoming off, you begin to suspect that there is no more than Luck in it; you observe this closely, and there forms, in the dusk dimly, a Shape; very soon you see a Hand, and from its movements you divine a Brain behind the whole contrivance. "Good!" you say quietly, with a determined nod; "I'm watched, I'm helped: I'll do my bit; the rest will come about without my worrying or meddling." And so it is. Good-night. 666 1: The quote is from the Golden Dawn Neophyte ritual – T.S. 2: Crowley is talking about himself, as usual – T.S. 3: Julian Baker, a member of the Golden Dawn – T.S. 4: S.L. "MacGregor" Mathers – T.S. 5: The reference is to the Abramelin operation – T.S.
|