The following editorial was written by Marcelo Ramos Motta also known as Frater Parzival 11°
and clearly expounds the logic behind exposing Israel Regardie as a traitor who deleted fifteen thousand words from
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS. I agree completely with this exposure and not only was it an honorable
gesture for Θελημα to
restore the body of the text deleted; it was in complete
compliance with the Book of the Law to know and destroy the traitors.
The ordeals thou shalt oversee thyself, save only the blind ones. Refuse none,
but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors. I am Ra-Hoor-Khuit; and I am powerful to protect my servant.
Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee,
them attack without pity or quarter; & destroy them utterly. Swift as a trodden serpent turn and strike! Be thou yet
deadlier than he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh at their fear: spit upon them!
(AL III vs. 42)
Israel Regardie was a Probationer of the A∴A∴ and for a short period of time A.C.'s secretary. That he
was a traitor to the man Crowley, to the Master Therion Himself, the system of the A∴A∴; and to my
Superior who was the most devoted disciple of Karl Germer there can no doubt from the following facts you will be
reading below.
Mr. Motta states that the purist will object to his changes in the text of Aleister Crowley; and this is
no doubt a valid objection that what Aleister Crowley wrote, he wrote. It is historically dangerous
to alter what he wrote for future scholars to actually be confused on what was originally written.
Yet, this isn't necessarily why I leave the Aleister Crowley text the way it was — and do not include his
edits with punctuation. Other purists object stating that in Liber OZ it states "man" is used in the
sense of the
word "humanity" and to be consistent with Mr. Motta's school of thought this would need to be
changed — and
therefore
absolutely would be forbidden whereas this was given not only with Aleister Crowley's signature but the Seal of the Beast.
An interesting point — with a valid objection. Yet I have no objections to the school of thought of My Superior, my
motives
are infinitely more sublime. I will state that the School of thought of every
Exempt Adept 7 °= 4▫ is unique; and even state further that the School of thought of every
Master of the Temple 8 °= 3▫ has its basis on what Instructions are given though the Path of ד.
Let My writings be a testimony of My proof that this decision is based on Truth — and yet who but
those who are approaching these planes and levels can be sure?
I will point out that the English language itself, in its further evolution will come from the style of
how it is written in the Book of the Law. Confer AL III vs. 2.. When the words, "Spelling is defunct" was proclaimed this
began a new manifestation of the English language that will evolve a grammar consistent with the style and manner from
the Book of the Law.
Therefore, this second edition will be unique — what Marcelo Motta wrote remains completely
intact except for some work with Greek and Hebrew that my Superior would have approved of.
The publishing computer that was used was so low tech that such items were impossible to be included -
and what Aleister Crowley wrote remains intact without the editing that was done.
The first edition was written without the italics of Mr. Motta's comments being inserted between
the text — and this makes the edition very difficult at times to read. My Superior writes the following in the first edition.:
As you note from the above, italics were clearly impossible for the low tech publishing computer —
and the accounts were drained as a consequence of the court cases.
Marcelo Motta had lived in a time where such computer programs were not as user friendly as the
wonderful desktop publishing that we take for granted today — I am able to restore, and return to the same
formats that were used by previous editions.
Am I stating that I am not in agreement with my Superior, Marcelo Motta in the A∴A∴ and the O.T.O.
by not proceeding precisely like he did during his lifetime? Why, no, of course not! Yet, you must realize that My
will is not his will —
and I have to prepare my own magical gestures to manifest my own school of thought on all its subtle planes.
Who but a slave would try to be the self same wax mold of his teacher?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As our subscribers know, this number of The Oriflamme should have been dedicated to Book Four Commented Part III,
subtitled "Thelemic Magick." We have had to alter our schedule due to a renewed publication of
Mr. Francis "Israel"
Regardie's piracy of Magick Without Tears.
Francis Regardie is a Jew. So far as Thelemites are concerned, this is not and has never been a label of infamy.
Rather, from the testimony of history, it has often been a label of merit. Sadly, in Mr. Regardie's case, an exception
proves the rule.
Some weak—minded correspondents of ours have, once in a while, complained that we denounced Francis Regardie in past
Thelemic publications. Some were so advanced in weak-mindedness — or in hypocrisy — that they pretended to be unable to
understand why we were so "hostile" to Mr. Regardie — implying that we are intolerant of an individual, on the whole,
valuable to society.
We are not really concerned about the opinions of weak-minded people; they are usually weak—charactered, as Mr.
Regardie is, although he certainly is not weak-minded. Another exception that proves the rule.
We will not, therefore, try to defend ourselves against the accusations, veiled or otherwise, of animosity towards
Mr. Francis "Israel" Regardie. Our main concern is now, as it has always been, that, as long as
his copyrights are
protected by law, Aleister Crowley should not be misrepresented in print by liars or by thieves. Mr. Regardie, as
his record proves, is both. Unhappily, too many Jews these days are both, in some context or another. Some, like
Mr. Menachem Begin, step further backwards, and become also terrorists and murderers. It may or may not be significant
to the reader that such unworthy Jews are usually "Israelis." If there is a pun here, it is not of our
making. Indeed,
we doubt it is of the making of Mr. Francis "Israel" Regardie's parents.
In 1937 e.v. (significantly, again, just before the start of the Second World War) Mr. Regardie published, for the first
time, his "The Golden Dawn" compilation. In his introduction to that book he stated he had felt compelled to publish it
because Aleister Crowley had mangled much of the material in The Equinox. The implication was, all through the
introduction, that what Aleister Crowley ever knew he had stolen from the Golden Dawn "secret manuscripts."
This piece of misinformation has (still significantly) been methodically spread among publishing houses in many different
countries by an Israeli double agent called Oskar Schlag, of whom you will learn more in an essay
further in this Oriflamme number: an essay appropriately called "Intelligence Services are not intelligent."
So far so good; Mr. Regardie had total legal freedom to libel Aleister Crowley, because Crowley was dead by the time
Mr. Regardie published the old Golden Dawn material. (By law, you cannot libel a dead person. You can say anything
you want about the dead. Even the heirs can not sue. De mortuis but the good, ha ha.) But if, as Mr. Regardie
implied and often explicitly stated, all that Crowley ever knew he stole from the Golden Dawn of
"MacGregor" Mathers & Co., one would expect Mr. Regardie never to touch Crowley material. After all, what use is
Crowley material if you can have — thanks to Mr. Regardie's generosity, altruism, and moral honestly — access to the
fountainhead of wisdom in the four (two next, and now one) volumes of Mr. Regardie's "The Golden Dawn?"
Unfortunately for Regardie, however, Mr. Karl Germer kept publishing fresh Crowley material. Also unfortunately for
Mr. Regardie, serious students of The Equinox were able to perceive that Θελημα went light years beyond all the
cumbersome, baroque, verbose and imprecise "secret manuscripts" that Mr. Regardie so generously "gave"
to the
world — collecting the royalties for his own pockets. Much of the material in his "The Golden Dawn" edition was
previously unpublished, mind you; therefore, copyright protected. Did Mr. Regardie pay royalties to the authors, or the
heirs of the authors, of that material? Not so you could notice.
Eventually, revenue from this first exercise stated to dry up: people lost interest in
Regardie's "The Golden Dawn" once
it became clear that it did not nearly match the material in The Equinox, or in the new Crowley material Mr. Germer
helped his Master publish, and after Crowley's death kept publishing (under conditions of great hardship): The Equinox
of the Gods, Eight Lectures on Yoga, The Heart of the Master, Little Essays Towards Truth, The Book of Thoth, The Gospel
According to Saint Bernard Shaw, The Vision and the Voice Annotated, Magick Without Tears, 777 revised, The Book of Lies
Commented and — with the help of yours truly — Liber Aleph. By the end of the
Sixties, Francis "Israel" Regardie's
disparagement of Crowley's genius was no longer credible. Therefore, since by then Mr. Germer was dead and Regardie
thought a thief has nothing to fear from the dead, he started pirating again — this time Crowley material.
He published
something called "Gems from the Equinox."
So far, not too far: since Crowley had deliberately allowed the copyrights of the first Equinox volume to lapse, one
could not accuse Mr. Regardie of blatant theft, although one might think he should have felt morally obliged to at least
share royalties with the O.T.O. — had he any morals. Still, it is difficult to understand why Mr. Regardie
should have
felt compelled to edit "gems" from The Equinox if, as he had previously stated in print, all the material in it was
cribbed from the ineffable mysteries of the "pure" Golden Dawn...
Having noticed a resurgence of interest in "his" writings with this publication, Mr. Regardie went further. He edited
"The Vision and the Voice Commented" — and, since this book had been originally done in a very small edition and was
totally out of print, this time he felt safe to take one step further in his intellectual, if not material, theft: he
added his asinine comments to Aleister Crowley's comments, troubling himself not at all about making a difference between
them — an "interpretation" of AL I 22 that would subsequently prove helpful to other thieves. I ordered this edition
from Samuel Weiser, Inc.; upon its arrival in Brasil I noticed the mangling of the text and mailed it back with a note
explaining why I was rejecting it. This was reported to Regardie, along with my pointed comments on his ethics; and did
not predispose him to be one of my admirers. So much the better, for I am sometimes weak enough to measure my worth by
the worth of those who admire me; being admired by Francis "Israel" Regardie would leave me deeply worried about myself.
However, by the time my existence began to trouble Mr. Regardie, his presumption had already gone too far: he had
published his gelded edition of Magick Without Tears. This time it was total legal theft. Mr. Regardie, upon becoming
aware that finally someone had appeared on the scene who could legally claim to represent the O.T.O., began to try to
extricate himself. In contradictory statements (which we have in writing) made over a period of several years he claimed
to different inquirers, first that all the Crowley material, with the exception
of his "edition" of Magick Without Tears (!), was in the public domain, and
"Motta had nothing to say about it." After some years, being notified by Donald Weiser or
James Wasserman or some other liar and thief like himself that I was still going strong, he stated that he had
permission to publish Crowley from Joseph Metzger in Switzerland. Upon being politely requested to present
evidence of Mr. Metzger's "permission," he sulked and went into the kind of Stainless Silence of which
"maharishis,"
"paramanhansas" and other "holy masters" are so fond at such occasions. Finally, more recently,
he stated that he had permission to publish from Grady McMurtry. Upon again being politely asked to clarify whether
this "permission" dated back to the time when he first stated that the material was in the public domain, or at
least back to the time when he claimed to have Metzger's permission, he again chose to withdraw into Inscrutable Silence.
We strongly doubt that this plain, public unveiling of his lack of character will
disturb the serenity of his Retirement.
The Equinox Volume One was in the public domain by the time Francis "Israel" Regardie picked
his "gems" from it. In that
instance, although Regardie was morally a thief, legally he was just a parasite. The Vision and the Voice Commented was
not officially copyrighted, due to Mr. Germer's lack of familiarity with copyright law: he thought the book was in the
public domain, having first been published in The Equinox Volume One; but the additional Crowley comments were not in the
public domain, and may still be protected in the United States of America (they are certainly protected in many other
countries, England included); this is one of the points the O.T.O. is now determining in the courts.
But in the case of Magick Without Tears, Regardie's position that he could publish this book because it was in the public
domain was a flagrant and malicious lie; as you can see from the photographic reproductions on the next page:
As already stated, when Regardie claimed "permission" from Metzger we requested to see it in
writing; which we — and so
far as we know, everybody else — never did. "Permission" from
McMurtry ("given" years after the fact)
we did not trouble
to request proof of, because quite possibly Regardie could exhibit a scrap of paper to that effect: it is well known by
now that if I point out that someone is a liar, a thief, or an incompetent, McMurtry will hastily "charter" him
or her in
something or another, and "grant" him or her unmerited or preposterous titles. But as neither Metzger nor
McMurtry ever
had sanction from Mr. Germer or from his executor to represent the Crowley copyrights (we are now in the process of
proving this in court) their "permission" to Regardie is no better than the permissiveness he allows himself.
Although Mr. Germer, in many different letters, expressed to me his total lack of trust in Regardie's sincerity, I do not
think he ever realized that when Regardie appeared and offered his "services"
to Θελημα and Aleister Crowley he was
already, as James Wasserman was when he offered his "services" to me, an agent of sinister and powerful interests.
Mr. Germer's explanation of Regardie's "disenchantment" with Crowley was this: Crowley had told his secretary
and
"disciple" that the Master is selfish; and from that moment on Regardie had begun to fear Crowley
was a "Black Brother,"
and decided to fight him for the rest of his life.
This explanation, nevertheless, does not sufficiently dovetail with the facts of Regardie's conduct in the years since
Mr. Germer's death. As to the Master being selfish; we deny Regardie moral character or spiritual understanding, but
we do not deny him plain old everyday Yiddish cunning and worldliness. It cannot fail to have occurred to Regardie that
if Crowley really was a "Black Brother," the last thing he would do would be to warn a disciple against himself:
the
average "maharishi" is far, of course, from being a "Black Brother," but is astute enough to
protest nothing but
"endless love" to his dupes.
The selfishness of the Master is a fact; he or she cares for absolutely nothing but his or her Work; disciples are merely
tools in the game of His or Her life, to be used (but not abused) or discarded as a child does to lead
soldiers or to dolls. The Master is merely an instrument of the Gods; His or Her "personal" life is an illusion; the
Work which he or she was sent to do is all that matters. The Juggernaut of the Hindus is nothing but an image of
this — to the profane — terrible reality. If the disciple cannot accept this fact, and live with it, he or she is
at perfect liberty to stop being a disciple. But he or she should at least have the common decency to feel grateful
for the Master's frank warning, and not try to rob His or Her instrument of its property.
I myself have often been accused — and from the point of view of the accusers, I admit sometimes with cause — of
being unfeeling, overbearing, totally involved with myself, ruthlessly cold and, of course, always pitiless. I have
been accused of not doing my Work, which from the point of view of the accusers should be that of "saving" and
"consoling" them. After all, am I not supposed to be a Servant of Humanity?
But to be a Servant of Humanity is not to be babysitter to knaves or to fools; it is to cultivate the best, not the worst,
in the soul of those who come to you for instruction; it is to make gold from lead. The operation is far from painless,
either to the prima materia or to the Alchemist (although the prima materia may perhaps be forgiven for ignoring the
problems of the latter — what can it know of the Pain of the Goat?) Our purpose, as Crowley himself inimitably stated,
is twofold: to fortify the fit and to eliminate the unfit. If you want "consolation" and crave a safe haven,
come not to
the Master; go to the preacher or to the charlatan (is there truly a difference between the two?)
You deserve each other. I am not here to please you or to love you: I am here to please Those who sent me, and
to teach you to love Them more than you "love" yourselves. In short, I am a Servant, and would make
Servants of you;
meanwhile, I will make you into my servants. If the program does not please, it is useless to try to change it; get
away from me and go play with your toys.
It would have been easier to believe in the sincerity of Francis "Israel"
Regardie's "disenchantment" if he had gone away
to play with his toys; but it has become progressively clearer in the last three decades that he wants to appropriate
Crowley's toys to play with. This present publication is proof that he will not be allowed to do this.
This edition restores the original text of Magick Without Tears, from which Mr. Regardie cut over fifteen thousand words;
it restores and increases the list of quoted books that appeared in the legitimate original edition; and
enlarges the index. It restores Mr. Germer's original introduction. It includes notes that explain obscure points,
clarify certain terms, and indicate what parts of the text were excised by Mr. Regardie — sometimes explaining the
motivation behind the cut. By and large, however, Mr. Regardie's cuts speak for themselves, and little by little build
up an enlightening picture of his soul.
There are certain changes in the text. First, punctuation. Unfortunately, many of the letters were dictated to
Kenneth Grant, who by this time was Crowley's new secretary (he never had much luck with secretaries, did he.)
In letters to Mr. Germer, of which we have copies, Crowley complained that Grant was in the habit of changing his text
without consulting him. The punctuation in the original edition is often irregular; this might also be due to
who typed it; whatever the reasons, we have tried to make it more regular. Whenever it seemed to us, however, that
the punctuation followed the rhythm of Crowley's speech rather than the rules of grammar, we left it intact.
Second, we have changed the term "Christianity" and its derivates to
the term "Christism," wherever
it is clear in the text that Crowley is not speaking about legitimate Christianity, of which we are the heirs, but of the
Roman-Alexandrine con—game and its later branches. The term "Christism" was invented by Fernando
Pessoa, the
great Portuguese poet who became Crowley's pupil, King of the O.T.O. in Portugal, and eventually the first
Thelemically trained Master of the Temple in a Latin country. The term is useful, and we are sure that Crowley
would have approved of this change. Fernando Pessoa dedicated his life to fighting
for Θελημα in his country; he died
young under the terrible burden of constant attack by the Roman Catholic Church; he died unknown. He is now
recognized as one of the greatest and most original poets of his country; widely admired in Portugal and Brasil;
translated into several languages; frequently, like Shakespeare, quoted unknowingly, mostly by young people.
With its usual cynicism, the Roman Catholic Church in Portugal and Brasil is now pretending that it always admired him.
He will eventually be recognized as one of the greatest poets of the world. There is a translation of his works in
English; we have not read it, so cannot opine as to its merits; but for those who may be interested in the man, it
might be a start. Of course, the essence of great poetry can usually be caught in all its beauty only in the original
idiom. Happy are they who can read Homer in Greek, Goethe, Schiller and Helne in German, Vatsyayana in Sanskrit,
Omar Kayyam in Persian, the Koran in Arabic, the Song of Songs in Hebrew, Lao Zi in Chinese... I envy them.
Third, and this will certainly raise some hackles among purists, we have changed terms that in these days of heightened
feminine self—consciousness might be considered evidence of sexism. Such changes can only be made when the expression
was merely a figure of speech, and not indicate an opinion (or, if you will, a prejudice) on Crowley's part.
When it is clear that the references to the male or to the female were fully intended to express differences between the
sexes, we left them intact. But the pronoun "he" and the term "man" have traditionally been
used in English for
centuries to express not the male half of the species only, but the species in general; and when such occasions happened
along, we adopted the cumbersome device of "he or she" or "him or her" and its like; for it is better to be cumbersome
than to be unclear. Crowley always spoke of the Initiate as a male, and of the Master of the
Temple as "he." But since
this was not an expression of prejudice (else, he would not have stated that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Master of
the Temple, as he did; or that Sappho was a Philosophus who eventually became a Dominus Liminis and in dying reached
Adeptship), but merely a figure of style, we have changed the form in an attempt to preserve the thought. Crowley has
been accused — by the Roman Catholic Church of course — of hating and despising women. You will notice that most of the
letters in Magick Without Tears were written to women; and women should read them without being disturbed, in these
days of feminist activism that we can but encourage and applaud, by conventions of speech. We are not sure that
Mr. Karl Johannes Germer would have approved of this our initiative; but we have done it on our Authority.
These reservations expressed, you have here the original Crowley text, pure and as intact as using Israel Regardies
and Kenneth Grants as secretaries could leave it.
One of the reasons why I am most unsympathetic towards Francis "Israel" Regardie is that, at the
time Magick Without
Tears was first published, he was enjoying good revenues from his "The Golden Dawn" compilation and
creating for himself,
among superficial thinkers, a reputation as a man of wisdom; yet, he contributed nothing to the Crowley book he later
pirated; he lifted not one finger to help. Magick Without Tears was printed under conditions of the greatest hardship:
the text was typed on an early electric typewriter (the same one on which Mr. Germer ordered me to type a list he had
made of the books in the O.T.O. library; he also ordered me to keep a copy of the list, that is now being used in court
to find out how much of the library was since criminally sold by either Grady McMurtry, Helen Parsons-Smith, or
Phyllis whatever); the result was mimeographed and bound. When I first talked of these things with Mr. Germer,
I asked him how many copies had been printed; he told me two hundred. Seeing the expression on my face he asked if I
thought the edition should have been larger. I said I thought it should have been at least a thousand, upon which he
grew greatly indignant; for he had wanted to print at least a thousand, but the people — guess who — who had "helped"
him put it out had protested this was not worth the trouble — they did not think even two hundred copies would sell.
Who would want to read Aleister Crowley...?
The final reason why I am unsympathetic towards Francis "Israel" Regardie — indeed, the reason why I
will never forgive
him, and could never respect him, even as a fellow being; the reason why in my opinion he dishonors his religion and his
culture (as most Zionists do), is that when he first published his Magick Without Tears piracy it went through two
printings in a matter of months; he made good money from his theft; and he did not send one cent of this money to Mrs.
Sascha Germer, who (in the absence of myself) was legally responsible for the Crowley copyrights; to whom he should have
gone for permission to publish (the trouble was, she would never have given it to him); who had then less than three years
to live, and who was slowly starving to death. Literally so. The reason why this conduct dishonors his religion and
his culture is that Mrs. Germer was Jewish; and a good Jew will never allow another Jew to starve, particularly a woman.
This was the grimmest survival rule the Jews learned, first from deprivation in the physical deserts of the Middle East,
then from two thousand years of deprivation in the moral deserts of the Christist world.
Francis "Israel" Regardie is a
bad Jew in the Jewish sense; and in any human sense he is an unscrupulous, presumptuous and contemptible creep.
As I stated in my last letter to Mr. Donald Weiser, people like him and Regardie are a good excuse for Nazis: the
kind of example they give can only harm the Jews as a whole, for it can only harm humankind. We will go into this in
more detail in the essay appended to this book called "Intelligence Services are not Intelligent."
Since this number of The Oriflamme was prompted by the unethical behavior of one Jew, perhaps a reminder to unintelligent
readers is wanted. We have often been accused of anti—semitism because we criticize Jews who murder, exploit or rob
members of other cultural groups and sometimes even their fellow Jews. Those who thus libel us forget, out of malice
or stupidity, that our criticism of such behavior extends to all other members of our species. Our remarks on people
like Regardie, Weiser, Begin, Kahane, etc., should not be thought to automatically apply to all members of their faith.
We think the average Jew is an outstanding asset to any society in which she or he may move and work. But since
Jews excel, not only in our opinion but their own, the average homo saps of whatever sex, color, or faith,
we also think it their duty to always exhibit in their conduct that excellence so hardly won.
Love is the law, love under will.
IN 1943 e.v. Aleister Crowley met a lady who, having heard of his wide knowledge and
experience, asked
his advice on occult, spiritual and practical matters
Actually, those letters were addressed to different people, most of them women.
Many were addressed to Jane Wolfe, who Crowley had met years before.
This chance connection resulted in a stimulating exchange of letters. Crowley then asked
others to put similiar questions to him. The result was this collection of over eighty letters which are now
being issued over the title that he chose, "MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS".
This was a take—off on an arithmetic primer for children that was a bestseller for several decades.
Crowley did not copies of his early letters to the above-mentioned lady, so was unable to
to include them in the collection that he planned to publish. Fortunately they have been preserved and are now
included in the introduction to this book. Their original form has retained with the opening and closing formulae
which Crowley used in all his letters. Crowley at first intended to call the book ALEISTER EXPLAINS EVERYTHING, and
sent the following circular to his friends and disciples asking them to suggest subjects for inclusions:
"Much gratified was the author of THE BOOK OF THOTH to have so many letters of appreciation, mostly from
women, thanking him for not 'putting it in unintelligible language', for 'making it all so clear that even I
with my limited intelligence can understand it, or think I do.'
It is interesting that women responded to the EQ. III 5 in greater numbers than men: the Roman
Catholic Church had kept up an intensive campaign against Crowley since Mussolini's days, accusing him in the press,
in private documents of Romish orders, and in confidential instructions to "priests" of being an enemy and despiser
of womanhood. But the second World War had been very productive: with most young men on the front, bosses and managers
had to hire women to positions women would usually not have occupied before the conflict, and even to promote them.
An entire generation of females had a first taste of personal freedom, and after the war was over many of them resented
having to give it up. Some never did, and the Feminist Revolution gathered momentum from them. Thoughout this book,
behind Crowley's jokes and gibes, his deep love and respect for the so-called "tender sex" will become very clear
"Nevertheless and notwithstanding! For many years the Master Therion has felt acutely the need of
some groundwork teaching suited to those who have only just begun the study of Magick and its subsidiary sciences...
Such as physics, astronomy, mathematics, geology, biology, medicine, psychiatry... And sociology.
Very specially this...
..., or are merely curious about it, or interested in it with intent to study. Always he has
done his utmost to make his meaning clear to the average intelligent educated person...
Always an absolute minority in any country...
...but even those who understand him perfectly and are most sympathetic to his work,
agree that it
is in this respect he has often failed. "So much for the dianosis -- now for the remedy!"
One genius, inspired of the
Gods, suggested recently that the riddle might be solved somewhat on the old and well - tried lines of 'Dr.
Brewer's Guide to Science'; id est by having aspirants write to the Master asking questions, the kind of
problem that
naturally comes into the mind of any sensible enquirer...
Unfortunately, another absolute minority, at least on this planet...
"..., and getting
his answer in the form of a letter. 'What is it?' 'Why should I
bother my head about it?' 'What are its principles?' 'What use
is it?' 'How do I begin?', and the like.
"This plan has been put into action; the idea has been to cover
the subjects from every possible angle. The style has been colloquial
and fluent; technical terms have either been carefully avoided or most
carefully explained; and the letter has not been admitted to the series until
the querent has expressed satisfaction. Some seventy letters, up to the
present have been written, but still there seem to be certain gaps in the
demonstration, like those white patches on the map of the World, which looked
so tempting fifty years ago.
This memorandum is to ask for your collaboration and support. A
list, indicating briefly the subject of each letter already written, is appended.
Should you think that any of those will help you in your own problems, a typed copy
will be sent to you at once ... Should you want to know anything outside
the scope, send in your question (stated as fully and clearly as possible) ...
The answer should reach you, bar accidents, in less than a month ... It is
proposed ultimately to issue the series in book form.""
This has now been done.
This was, of course, the original Editor, Mr. Karl Johannes Germer, during
whose lifetime Francis Israel Regardie would never have dared to proclaim himself qualified
to edit Crowley, much less to speak for him!
March 19, 1943 e.v.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I was very glad to gather from your conversation yesterday afternoon that
you have a serious intention of taking up the Great Work in the proper
spirit. Your criticisms of previous experience in the course of your adventures
appeared to be singularly sane and just. As I promised I am writing this
letter to cover a few practical points which we had not time to discuss and which
in any case I think it better to arrange by correspondence.
1) It is of the first importance that you should understand my personal
position. It is not actually wrong to regard me as a teacher, but it
is certainly liable to mislead; fellow-student, or, if you like, fellow-sufferer,
seems a more appropriate definition.
The purpose is to avoid, if possible, a devotional approach mingled with religious
awe on the part of the disciples. The Thelemic Method is, after all, the Method of Science. Before I
came to the United States to pick up the pieces from the Gunther Gernon Cabiness III debacle of "Troll
Publishing" I asked Soror K.A., who happened to be the woman —— and the only man —— on the spot at the time:
"Make fun of me. Tell them little ridiculous things about me." Well, she did this great enthusiasm —— perhaps
too great, but then, she also resented the Teacher —— who doesn't? As a result, when I arrived I was looked upon
with suspicion and even with contempt; even so, it was necessary to beat them off to keep them from sitting at my
feet with their tongues hanging out to listen to my Holy Discourses, instead of working their asses off and listening
to the voice of their own souls. Where any. Crowley was specially adept at puncturing Holy Devotion Unto The Guru, and
and is here being very tactful indeed. But this is one problem, as well as the solution, are incomparably discussed
in Chapter M of Liber 333 Commented.
The climax of my life was what is known as the Cairo Working, described in
the minutest detail in The Equinox of the Gods...
Book Four Part IV, The Law, to be published in this Volume of the THE ORIFLAMME.
...At that time most
of The Book of the Law was completely unintelligible
to me, and a good deal of it—especially the third chapter—extremely
antipathetic. I fought against this book for years; but it proved irresistible.
I do not think I am boasting unfairly when I say that my personal researches
have been of the greatest value and importance to the study of the subject
of Magick and Mysticism in general, especially my integration of the various
thought-systems of the world, notably the identification of the system
of the Yi King with that of the Qabalah. But I do assure you that the
whole of my life's work, were it multiplied a thousand fold, would not be worth
one tithe of the value of a single verse of The Book of the Law.
2) It may be that later on you will want a copy of "Eight Lectures on Yoga"...
EQ. III No. 4, which will be re—issued, annotated, in due course.
...; so I am putting a copy aside for you in case you should want it.
3) With regard to the O.T.O., I believe I can find you a typescript of
all the official documents. If so, I will let you have them to read,
and you can make up your mind as to whether you wish to affiliate to the
Third Degree of the Order. I should consequently, in the case of your
deciding to affiliate, go with you though the script of the Rituals and explain
the meaning of the whole thing; communicating, in addition, the real secret
and significant knowledge of which ordinary Masonry is not possessed.
4) The horoscope; I do not like doing these at all, but it is part of the
agreement with the Grand Treasurer of the O.T.O....
At that time, Karl Johannes Germer. Mr. Germer was an excellent astrologer, and it
is interesting that he should insist on Crowley drawing the charts; it shows he considered Crowley a
better astrologer than himself.
... that I should undertake them
in worthy cases, if pressed. But I prefer to keep the figure to
myself for future reference, in case any significant event makes consultation
desirable.
Now there is one really important matter. The only thing besides The Book
of the Law which is in the forefront of the battle. As I told you yesterday,
the first essential is the dedication of all that one is and all that one has to
the Great Work, without reservation of any sort...
The one thing that Messrs. Regardie, Grant, Metzger, McMurtry, Mudd, Smith,
Neuberg, Stansfleld Jones, and Mesdames "Hirsig", Wolfe, Parsons Smith, Wade-Seckler-McMurtry and lots of
less notorious people we could mention, prove constantly, with tiresome regularity, totally incapable to do.
This must be kept constantly in mind; the way to do this is to practice "Liber Resh vel
Helios, sub figura CC". There is another version of these Adorations, slightly fuller; but those in the text are
quite alright. The important thing is not to forget...
That is, not to forget the dedication of all that one is and all that one has, to the Great Work.
... I shall have to teach you the signs and gestures which go with the words.
It is also desirable before beginning a formal meal to go through the following
dialogue: Knock 3—5—3: say, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
The person at the other end of the table replies: "What is thy Will?" You:
"It is my Will to eat and drink." He: "To what end?"
You: "That my body may be fortified thereby." He: "To what end?"
You: "That I may accomplish the Great Work. "...
It is customary, if you are a Probationer or a Member of the G.D., to add at this point:
"The Knowledge and Conversation of my Holy Guardian Angel".
...The other: "Love is the law, love under
will." You, with a single knock: "Fall to." When alone make a monologue
of it: thus, Knock 3-5-3. Do what, etc. It is my Will to, etc., that my
body, It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and
being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a
crowded thoroughfare—lorries or no lorries—and saying the Adorations...
Alas! Such counsels of perfection are for the future. You will attract not only
attention to yourself, but the deadly enmity of Christists —— to say nothing of other crapulous
creeds —— if you do something like this. I used to do it, when I was in college in the U.S.A., at a time
when I was under special surveillance by order of Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, and remember being approached by an agent
who made no special effort to remain inconspicuous and asked why I stopped in the middle of the street and babbled
words to myself. He knew perfectly well what I did, and why I did it, and was merely trying to fill his daily quota
and earn his salary. You should say the Adorations fully whenever you can, but in public you may merely say them
interiorly, putting either your forefinger or your thumb to your lips, depending on your Grade or your pleasure. The
important detail is not to forget them —— ever! Also, you must realize that the Stations of the Sun have absolutely
nothing to do with normal clock time. They have to do with Local Time, and most specially the merdian that happens to
be over your head. It is Noon when the Sun is crossing the local meridian, no matter what the clock says. And if you
are on a mountaintop the Sun will set much later, and rise much earlier, than if you are in a valley. Skyscrapers
also count. And south of the Equator, noon and midnight are reversed cardinal points. Either you keep these things in
mind or you will end up with dead dogma such as "Christmas" and Holy Inquisitions in your hands. If you feel that it
is better to have them in your hands than at your throat, you are becoming crapulous, friend. Or rather ex — friend.
...; and you must not mind snubbing your guest—or your host—if he or she should prove
ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue...
Actually, social occasions are usually smoothly passed over by merely apologizing to your host
or partner, stating that you are going to say your prayers, and doing it. There is nothing that shows more promptly
whether a person deserves human company or not than their reaction to such a simple request.
... It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that
they afford so excellent a training. They teach you concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a
host of other virtues.
Like a perfect lady, I have kept the tit bit to the last. It is absolutely
essential to begin a magical diary, and keep it up daily. You begin by an
account of your life, going back even before your birth to your ancestry.
In conformity with the practice which you may perhaps choose to adopt later,
given in Liber Thisarb, sub figura CMXIII, paragraphs 27-28, Magick,
pp. 420—422, you must find an answer to the question: "How did I come to
be in this place at this time, engaged in this particular work?" As you
will see from the book, this will start you on the discovery of who you
really are, and eventually lead you to your recovering the memory of previous incarnations.
As it is difficult for you to come to Town except at rare and irregular
intervals, may I suggest a plan which has previously proved very useful,
and that is a weekly letter. Eliphas Lévi did this with the Baron
Spedalieri, and the correspondence is one of the most interesting of his works.
You ask such questions as you wish to have answered, and I answer them to the
best of my ability. I, of course, add spontaneous remarks which may be
elicited by my observations on your progress and the perusal of your magical diary.
This, of course, should be written on one side of the paper only, so that the opposite
page is free for comments, and an arrangement should be made for it to be inspected at regular intervals.
Love is the law, love under will.
April 20, 1943 e.v.
I was very glad to have your letter, and am very sorry to hear that you
have been in affliction. About the delay, however, I think I ought to tell
you that the original Rule of the Order of A∴A∴ was that the introducer
read over a short lection to the applicant, then left him alone for a quarter
of an hour, and on coming back received a "yes" or "no."
If there was any hesitation about it the applicant was barred for life.
The reason for the relaxation of the rule was that it was thought better
to help people along in the early stages of the work, even if there was no
hope of their turning out first—class...
That relaxation was a mistake which has seriously affected the progress of the Work,
since it produced people like Regardie, Stanfeld Jones, Kenneth Grant, Grady McMurtry, Phyllis Wade-Seckler-McMurtry,
Helen Parsons Smith, etc. etc. etc. If people are not going to turn out first class they should be ruthlessly discarded;
we are not in the salvation business, we are in the teaching business. If a person is obviously unfit it is a mistake
to encourage them in the delusion that they can make progress. This progress is usually at the expense of the energy of
the instructor, that would be better applied teaching someone worthier. I myself was introduced to the Order according
to the original rule. I had exactly five minutes to decide if I wanted to join or not. And every time I have relaxed
this rule with one of my pupils that pupil has eventually proved unworthy, and the Work has been harmed by her or him.
... But I should like you to realize that sooner or later, whether in this incarnation or another, it is put up
to you to show perfect courage in face of the completely unknown, and the power of rapid and irrevocable decision
without without counting the cost.
I think that it is altogether wrong to allow yourself to be worried by "psychological, moral,
and artistic problems." It is no good your starting anything of any kind unless you can see clearly into
the simplicity of truth. All this humming and hawing about things is moral poison. What is the use of
being a woman if you have not got an intuition, an instinct enabling you to distinguish between the genuine and the
sham?
On the other hand, see his remarks on the Woman Formula in Letter 53, "Mother—Love".
So-called "feminine intuition" can be found in both sexes, and was very rare in Western women in the Old Aeon: perceptive
temperaments had been ruthlessly weeded out by the Christist denominations, women exhibiting it being accused of
witchcraft, satanism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Only the "comfortable" type of women, exhibiting the "virtues" that Romanism
considered useful to its domination were allowed to thrive.
Intuition, so-called, is simply a well—developed Neschamic with the Ruach. If you were incarnated
in a female body it was indeed easier for this link to form and endure; but the energies of the Aeon of Horus
(Cf. LXV v 5-7, 44)provide both sexes with the opportunity of intuition now. Crowley knew perfectly well,
but was talking down to the level of the disciple. The need to do this leads the Masters often to being accused of
contradiction, silliness, or even dishonesty.
Your state of mind suggests to me that you must have been, in the past,
under the influence of people who were always talking about things, and
never doing any real work. They kept on arguing all sorts of obscure
philosophical points; that is all very well, but when you have succeeded in
analyzing your reactions you will understand that all this talk is just an excuse for not doing any serious work.
Does any of you recognize himself or herself in this description? Very likely not. Alas!
I am confirmed in this judgment by your saying: "I don't know if I want to
enter into a great conflict. I need peace."" Fortunately you save
yourself by adding: "Real peace, that is living and not stagnant."
All life is conflict. Every breath that you draw represents a victory in the
struggle of the whole Universe. You can't have peace without perfect mastery of
circumstance; and I take it that this is what you mean by "living, not stagnant."
Generous as always, loving as always. What she really meant was the legendary stork's device
of sticking your head in a hole in the sand and leaving your bottom to the wind.
But it is of the first consequence for you to summon up the resolution to
stamp on this sea of swirling thoughts by an act of will; you must say:
"Peace be still." The moment you have understood these thoughts for what
they are, tools of the enemy, invented by him with the idea of preventing
you from undertaking the Great Work—the moment you dismiss all such considerations
firmly and decisively, and say: "What must I do?" and having
discovered that, set to work to do it, allowing of no interruption, you will
find that living peace which (as you seem to see) is a dynamic and not a
static condition. (There is quite a lot about this point in Little Essays Toward Truth, and also in "The
Vision and the Voice".)
Your postscript made me smile. It is not a very good advertisement for the
kind of people with whom you have been associated in the past. My own position
is a very simple one. I obeyed the injunction to "buy a perfectly black hen,
without haggling." I have spent over 100,000 pounds of my inherited money
on this work: and if I had a thousand times that amount today it would all go in the
same direction. It is only when one is built in this way, to stand entirely aloof
from all considerations of twopence halfpenny more or fourpence halfpenny less, that
one obtains perfect freedom on this Plane of Disks.
Well, not quite; or rather, not in the least, if you are a Thelemite, for as the
Lord of the Aeon Himself remarked, all must be done "with business way". This attitude of indifference
to money only works insofar as no money is needed for the Work, and even then we are skeptical about its value.
It is proper to Eastern Masters (real ones, not the millionaire "maharishis" and "gurujis" and whatever), but not to us.
You cannot build Lodges without money, publish books without money, travel to faraway caves without money, etc., etc.,
etc. The error consists in valuing money in itself as a proof of achievement, rather than as a means to it.
Crowley erred constantly by not observing the recommendations in the Third Chapter of AL,
which he admittedly abhorred. He never, for instance, took the trouble to copyright Equinox I 1 - 10,
declaring (as Mr. Germer told me upon asking) that he felt it should belong to Mankind. We all know how Mankind
manifested its gratitude. His next attack of animadversion led him to sell Boleskine House, his last anchor to
financial security, and give the money to the O.T.O.: the Grand Treasurer General he had chosen promptly stole it.
By 1919 e.v. he had partly recovered his senses, and Equinox III 1 was copyrighted in his name upon
being published in the United States; but again the text of this book contained serious errors of doctrine that
conflicted glaringly with the Third Chapter of the Book of the Law. This time, the Lord Himself intervened: the intended
No. 2, which was even worse in this respect, never appeared. Subsequent numbers of Equinox III were published
with extreme sacrifice and at great intervals. Without the abnegation of Karl Johannes Germer, the publication of
of No. 3, The Equinox of the Gods, No. 4, Eight Lectures on Yoga, and No. 5, The Book of Thoth, would never
have occurred.
Mr. Germer himself suffered of this ambivalence towards money. I remember his making my son's
horoscope and describing it to me in a letter. He detected in the boy, among other things, a tendency to "acquisitiveness",
and remarked in an aside "I do not like it". But without some degree of acquisitiveness you are liable to end up your life,
as Crowley did, depending on the generosity of your disciples; and if you ponder on the average generosity of the average
disciple you will do well to keep in mind Chapter 55 of Liber 333, which Crowley himself, unfortunately for him,
for Mr. Germer, and for me, never did.
Being a "Crowley disciple" is not, as I know to my regret, conducive to your getting and keeping good
jobs, specially at a managerial level; being a Crowley thief, like Regardie, Grant, McMurtry and others, helps. This is
reflexion on the society in which we live, not on Crowley. Future disciples may have it better, but they will do well
to count their pennies meanwhile and keep a wary eye for the intelligence services which, tools of the established cults
that they are, keep hounding our feet and passing on the "confidential information" to our possible employers that we are
satanists, or anarchists, or nazis, or drug dealers, or sex perverts, or whatever. If I sound overly indignant in this
paragraph, it is because I am reliving three decades of such "attentions" from the F.B.I., the C.I.A., Shin Beth, the
Brasilian Military Intelligence, and perhaps even the K.G.B.. It gets boring after a while, you know.
All the serious Orders of the world, or nearly all, begin by insisting that
the aspirant should take a vow of poverty...
See what I mean? There he goes again. This is absolutely not Thelemic at all.
...; a Buddhist Bhikku, for example,can own only nine objects—his three robes, begging bowl,
a fan, toothbrush, and so on. The Hindu and Mohammedan Orders have similar regulations; and so do all
the important Orders of monkhood in Christianity...
He means Christism. Yet, it was exactly the cults derived from those orders that the Lord of the
Aeon decried as crapulous! It is quite obvious that even near the end of his life Crowley did not like the Third
Chapter of The Book of the Law at all. Yet in the next paragraph his responsibilities as Prophet are again
affirmed.
Our own Order is the only exception of importance; and the reason for this
is that it is much more difficult to retain one's purity if one is living
in the world than if one simply cuts oneself off from it. It is far easier
to achieve technical attainments if one is unhampered by any such considerations.
These regulations operate as restrictions to one's usefulness in helping the world.
There are terrible dangers, the worst dangers of all, associated with complete
retirement. In my own personal judgment, moreover, I think that our own ideal of
a natural life is much more wholesome.
When you have found out a little about your past incarnations, you should
be able to understand this very clearly and simply.
What I have found about my past incarnations has confirmed my position, which is his own
Position as Prophet: wealth and power should belong to those who will use such attributes to serve humankind,
not to abuse it. If millionaires were initiates or heeded initiates, capitalism would neither oppress nor generate
poverty; and if commissars were initiates or heeded initiates, communism would work as well in practice as it is
supposed to work in theory.
Love is the law, love under will.
April 30, 1943 e.v.
Thank you for your long letter of no date, but received two days ago...
This sloppiness can be very irritating; also, bad for keeping records and for keeping
track of the surveillance of intelligence services, so-called.
... I am very sorry you are still feeling exhausted...
This, almost seventy years old, during the war between air raids, and suffering the kind of
deadly persecution and boycott that hounded his last four decades of existence. If she had any sense she would not
even mentioned her "troubles" to him; but if disciples had any sense they would not need to be disciples.
... I am not too good myself,
for I find this weather very trying. I will answer your various points as
best I can.I am arranging to send you the official papers connected with the O.T.O., but
the idea that you should meet other members first is quite impossible. Even
after affiliation, you would not meet anyone unless it were necessary for
you to work in cooperation with them. I am afraid you have still got the
idea that the Great Work is a tea—party. Contact with other students only
means that you criticize their hats, and then their morals; and I am not
going to encourage this. Your work is not anybody else's; and undirected
chatter is the worst poisonous element in human society.
When you talk of the "actual record" of the "Being called Jesus
Christ," I don't know what you mean. I am not aware of the existence of
any such record. I know a great many legends, mostly borrowed from previous
legends of a similar character.
It would be better for you to get a copy of "The Equinox of the Gods" and
study it. The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the
uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the
female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego—or what not.
By "love under will" one refers to the fact that the method in every case
is love, by which is meant the uniting of opposites as above stated, such
as hydrogen and chlorine, sodium and oxygen, and so on. Any reaction what-
ever, any phenomenon, is a phenomenon of "love", as you will understand
when I come to explain to you the meaning of the word "point—event". But
love has to be "under will," if it is to be properly directed. You must
find your True Will, and make all your actions subservient to the one great
purpose.
Rahoor is the Sun God; Tahuti is the Egyptian Mercury; Kephra is the Sun
at midnight.
A true disciple. These were details that, in a civilized country like
England, she could get information on in any local library; but she had to bother the Master
rather than exert herself
About your problems; what I have to do is to try to teach you to think
clearly. You will be immensely stimulated by having all the useless
trimmings stripped from your thinking apparatus. For instance, I don't
think you know the first principles of logic. You apparently take up a more
or less Christist attitude...
Again, we will change the word 'Christian' and its derivates to the word 'Christist' and
its derivates wherever it is clear in the text that Crowley is referring to the theology developed by the
Roman-Alexandrines, rather than to the theurgy of the original Gnostics, followers of Dionysus. The neologism
'Christist' was invented by the great Portuguese poet and Brother, Fernando Pessoa, and its use has been spreading
but surely since his demise. It is specially useful if you live in a country oppressed by Roman Catholicism in its
most virulent form, as are most countries in South America, the Phillippines, South Korea, Italy, France, Poland,
and as were the United States under the Kennedys.
..., but at the same time you like very much the idea
of Karma. You cannot have both.
They imply two totally different teleologies. The Christist concept is that you live only one life,
in which you are doomed to hell from the start, unless you save your soul by the benevolent mediacy of whatever branch
of the Romish heresy happens to vampirize your cultural group, in which case you go to purgatory or even heaven after
you die. Karma implies that you live a series of lives, and learn what is "good" for you by trial and error. The need
for "salvation" and the threat of "eternal damnation" are concepts totally alien to the concept of Karma.
The question about money does not arise. This old and very good rule (which
I have always kept) was really pertinent to the time when there were actual
secrets...
He is here referring to the rule that we do not accept money to pay for teaching or initiating.
...But I have published openly all the secrets. All I can do is to
train you in a perfectly exoteric way. My suggestion about the weekly
letter was intended to exclude this question, as you would be getting full
commercial value for anything paid.
Your questions about the Spirit of the Sun, and so on, are to be answered
by experience. Intellectual satisfaction is worthless. I have to bring
you to a state of mind completely superior to the mechanism of the normal mind.
Meaning, he is going to try to teach her to think for herself. Normal minds do not normally
think for themselves: they have been trained to react to stimuli, like Pavlov's dogs. In order to think for oneself
a person has to strip himself or herself from all prejudices of upbringing, cultural group and education. In this sense,
a college education is a handicap rather than an advantage, since it simply means that mind was subjected to extra
conditioning, unless the individual was fortunate enough to go to one of the first rate universities, where freshmen
are taught to think rather than to learn by rote. Such universities are becoming fewer and fewer in these days of intellectual
conflict between so—called capitalism and so—called marxism, for the "leaders" on both sides find it more profitable
to themselves to foster political and social dogma than to encourage free inquiry and free spirits. The process of
stripping oneself from one's acquired prejudices is extremely painful to the pupil, and most naturally give up and go back
to the herd. This is splendidly put across in of Stephen Crane's poems, "The Wayfarer":
A good deal of your letter is rather difficult to answer. You always seem
to want to put the cart before the horse. Don't you see that, if I were
trying to get you to do something or other, I should simply return you to
the kind of answer which I thought would satisfy you, and make you happy? ...
But of course it was this that she wanted him to do: it is the process by which the
"maharishis" and "gurujis" acquire their enormous fortunes. People go to the Master for consolation,
not for truth. But the Master is Truth, so what else can we teach?
... And this would be very easy to do because you have got no clear ideas about
anything. For one thing, you keep on using terms about whose significance
we are not yet in agreement...
Meaning that she constantly uses terms in emotional connotation to her conditioning,
rather than in their simple dictionary definition; so that when she says something he cannot be sure exactly
what she means, and when he gives an
answer she interprets it in terms of what she wants to hear, rather than of what he is trying to convey. This
is one of the most difficult problems in dealing with pupils.
... When you talk about the "Christian path,"
do you believe in vicarious atonement and eternal damnation—or don't you?
A great deal of the confusion that arises in all these questions, and grows constantly
worse as fellow—students talk them over—the blind leading the blind—is
because they have no idea of the necessity of defining their terms.
Then again, you ask me questions like "What is purity?" that can be answered
in a dozen different ways; and you must understand what is meant by a "universe of
discourse." ...
A "universe of discourse" means the limits within which one is trying to communicate ideas
through the use of words. If I (hopeless male chauvinist that I am) am talking about the beauty of a girl's
breasts, you should be able to understand that I am expressing my personal tastes in the shape of breasts, not
speaking of Beauty as an "eternal verity". Not unless I am a poet; poets have license to jump from a universe
of discourse to another, which is perhaps why so many poets are licentious. This is a pun. A pun could be defined
as a coupling of two or more universes of discourse in one word, usually in an attempt at humor.
... If you asked me—"Is this sample of cloride of gold a
pure sample?" I can answer you. You must understand the value of
precision in speech. I could go on rambling about purity and selflessness for
years, and no one would be a penny the better.
Except he, of course. But to be a "maharishi" or Prime Minister
or President or any other sort of charlatan was never one of his priorities.
P.S.—or rather, I did not want to dictate this bit...
Because the ape taking them down, who if was not Regardie by this time was Grant,
would interpret them according to his own universe of discourse, and become even more simian thereby.
... -your ideas about
the O.T.O. remind me of some women's idea of shopping. You want to maul about
the stock and then walk out with a proud glad smile: NO. Do you really think
that I should muster all the most distinguished people alive for your inspection and
approval?
Well, here he was indulging in a little bit of salesmanship.
Very few members of the O.T.O. were actually distinguished even then, and I am not talking
about social or intellectual distinction: I am talking about character and aspiration.
If you consider that both McMurtry and Grant were members, you will know what I mean.
On the other hand, it would certainly have been outrageous to drag in a Karl Johannes Germer or a
Rudolph Steiner or a J.B.S. Haldane or even an Arnold Krumm—Heller to subject them to the lady's scrutiny.
The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to
a sympathetic body ...
This refers to a clause in the original O.T.O. Constitution granting members of
Osirian Masonry an automatic right to become members of the III° O.T.O.
As the Constitution now stands, this privilege has been withdrawn. "Sympathetic" body, indeed!
...Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to
be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors; and
then—probably—thrown out on to the garbage heap ...
... Well, no, it's
not as bad as that; but we certainly don't want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself,
if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O.
is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute?
Secrets. There is one exception to what I have said about publishing everything:
that is, the ultimate secret of the O.T.O. This is really too dangerous to
disclose; but the safeguard is that you could not use it if you knew it, unless you
were an advanced Adept; and you would not be allowed to go so far unless we were
satisfied that you were sincerely devoted to the Great Work. (See "One Star
in Sight".). True, the Black Brothers could use it; but they would only destroy themselves.
Love is the law, love under will.
June 8, 1943 e.v.
Thanks for your letter. I couldn't find the O.T.O. typescript—and then
it struck me that it would be useful to await your reactions. If I were expecting
some presumably important papers by post, I should get anxious after 24 hours delay (at
most) and start enquiries. Anyhow, I can't find them for the moment; but Mr. Bryant
said he would lend you his "Blue Equinox": pages 195—270 give what you require.
But the real point of your affiliating is that it saves me from constantly
being on my guard lest I should mention something which I am sworn not to
reveal. As in every serious society, members are pledged not to disclose
what they may have learnt, whom they have met; it is so, even in Co-Masonry:
isn't it: But one may mention the names of members who have died. (See Liber LII, par. 2.)
Be happy then; the late
X... Y... was one of us. I hope that he and Rudolph Steiner will (between them)
satisfy your doubts ...
We must here introduce several observations. First, you will notice now seriously
Crowley took the secrecy of the O.T.O. material, rituals inclusive. You will see later on that Mr.
Israel Regardie, in his piracy, excised a long paragraph that makes it quite clear Crowley would never
have either welcomed or allowed the publication of the secret rituals of the O.T.O. in book form.
The reasons why Mr. Regardie excised that paragraph will become progressively clear as we go on.
Second, Mr. Germer, when editing the letters, withdrew any reference to the name of Mr. X... Y...,
although the man was then deceased. Mr. Germer did so to protect both the man's family and his friends
from the kind of "attention" that was then being served on Thelemites by the F.B.I. of Messrs. Hoover and McCarthy.
Do not forget that this book was first published, in its only legal edition before the present one - and the
only intact edition before this one — in 1954 e.v. At Hoover's instigation the F.B.I. had hounded both
Mr. and Mrs. Germer in such a manner that they were forced to leave New York and take residence in Hampton,
New Jersey. To the agents' credit we must add that they were not willing to do this: the letters from Hoover
to them actually threaten them with sanctions if they don't find something to the Germer's discredit.
Apparently Hoover was in good faith about this: he had obviously received "confidential information" that led
him to believe the Germers were guilty of horrible crimes. Since Hoover worked closely with the Vatican throughout
(both he and McCarthy were Roman Catholics) the entire witch-hunt of the Fifties, one does not have to wonder where
he got his prejudice. The agents finally got some lame accusations that Mr. Germer was a Nazi sympathizer from the
owner of "an occult bookshop the subject patronizes," and Hoover seems to have become satisfied with that.
It was enough to send agents to all of Mrs. Germer's pupils — she taught piano in private — and warn
them against her. She lost the majority of them, and with the pupils went the income that supported them both
in New York City. Hence the move to Hampton, where I first met the both of them.
The above quotations are from the F.B.I. archives, material that the bureau was forced to reveal
under the Freedom of Information Act which some of Mr. Reagan's supporters in the Senate and the House have expressed
a pious desire to have repealed. The names of some of the informers, however, have been blackened out in the records.
Nevertheless, any reader of these lines will be able to guess what "occult bookshop" in New York Mr. Germer patronized.
It is interesting that he should be accused of Nazism, and Mrs. Germer be accused of Nazism, when not only were they both
refugees from Nazism but also Mrs. Germer herself was Jewish. Mr. Germer was married three times: two of his wives were
Jewish. One of the motives he was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis was that he was sympathetic towards Jews.
He once wrote me that he would rather deal with a Jew than a Christist any time, a sentiment in which I heartily concur.
I do not hold it against Jews that people like Donald Weiser, Israel Regardie and Oskar Schlag happen to dishonor their
culture and their faith. "Mr. X... Y..." was an influential American.
The A∴A∴ is totally different. "One Star in Sight" tells you everything
that you need to know. (Perhaps some of these regulations are hard to grasp:
personally, I can never understand all this By-Law stuff. So you must ask me what,
and why, and so on.)
This is said in perfect sincerity. The man Crowley, the "scribe," is a totally different
energy-structure from the adept who conceived and organized the structure of the A∴A∴ system, or the
Master
who energized it. The only necessary link is that one is the instrument of the others. This should absolutely
not be confused with the spiritualist concept of "mediumship," but it is understandable that a profane mind may be
unable to perceive the difference. However, even the first and most elementary Trance of Union will show the novice
that there are more planes to his or her consciousness than the ones in which featherless bipeds usually function.
There is really only one point for your judgment. "By their fruits ye
shall know them." ...
Yes, but the author of this famous sentence seems not to have pondered that one person's fruit
is another person's poison; to say nothing of hogs or monkeys. We each go to the tree of our own choosing, and
find it excellent. Zionism and Romanism make me vomit, but doubtlessly taste sweet to Oskar Schlag and William Casey.
My only objection is that they both would like to ram their food down my throat, and I find it
unfit for human consumption.
... You have read Liber LXV and Liber VII;
That shows you what states you can attain by this curriculum. Now read "A
Master of the Temple" (Blue Equinox, pp. 127-170) for an account of the
early stages of training, and their results. ...
You will observe that he emphasized the early stages, and not Stansfeld Jones' attempt to
cross the Abyss,
which was unfortunately unsuccessful; however, this part of Jones' work was to have appeared in Equinox III 2;
and Jones' failure was one of several motives why this number of Equinox III was never printed.
By the time Crowley
received the Record, Jones was already trying to unseat the Master - and what was worst,
he was doing it unconsciously. (If you do it consciously, you have merely chosen the path of evil;
you are a Black Magician, but not necessarily a Black Brother.)
... (Of course, your path might not
coincide with, or even resemble, his path.)
But do get it into you head that "If the blind lead the blind, they shall
both fall into the ditch." If you had seen 1% of the mischief that I
have seen, you would freeze to the marrow of your bones at the mere idea
of seeing another member through the telescope! Well, I employ the figure
of hyperbole, that I admit ...
Meaning that he is exaggerating a little to impress the importance of isolation upon her.
It was too early in the day for him, in his Pure Fool's innocence, to perceive the disquiet this rigorous
secrecy would provoke in benevolent governments everywhere. Services of "intelligence" — one really wonders
at why they are given that name, when they are usually manned by the narrowest type of moral and intellectual
homo saps - fret a lot at all this mystery: we must be trying to keep people apart from each other so we can
manipulate them more easily, or teach them all kinds of unspeakable obscenities. Through the years, I have had
pupils who are not really pupils at all, but relay all the advice they are given to a central panel of "psychologists"
or computer scenario or whatnot that is trying to discover what makes us, or at least me, tick. I have learned to
detect the type: they usually take at least a month to answer letters of advice or to react to orders, because they
have to send it in and wait for instructions. Unfortunately, one's oath demands that one should put up with this kind
of thing, at least until the time when these traitors either give up or are ordered off by their bosses.
But it is impossible to stress the importance of working in isolation in the system of the A∴A∴,
at least in the stages before you reach Zelator fully. Probationers are putrid, and Neophytes are naughty;
they invariably interfere with each other, besides pestering you unceasingly, if you allow them to hold too much
intercourse - of any kind - with each other or with you!
... but it really won't do to have a dozen cooks at the
broth! If you're working with me, you'll have no time to waste on other people.
I fear your "Christianity" is like that of most other folk. You pick out
one or two of the figures from which the Alexandrines concocted "Jesus" (too many
cooks, again, with a vengeance!) and neglect the others. The Zionist Christ of Matthew
can have no value for you; nor can the Asiatic "Dying-God"—compiled from
Melcarth, Mithras, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Attis, Krishna, and others—who supplied
the miraculous and ritualistic elements of the fable.
Rightly you ask: "What can I contribute?" Answer: One Book. That is the
idea of the weekly letter: 52 of yours and 52 of mine, competently edited, would make a most
useful volume. This would be your property: so that you get full material value, perhaps
much more, for your outlay. ...
This is the kind of amazing generosity — some lawyers would call it stupidity - that was
always getting him into trouble and made him end his life in complete poverty.
... I thought of the plan because one such arrangement has
recently come to an end, with amazingly happy results: ...
... they should lie open to your admiring
gaze in a few months from now. Incidentally, I personally get nothing out of it; secretarial
work costs money these days. But there is another great advantage; it keeps both of us up to
the mark. Also, in such letters a great deal of odds and ends of knowledge turn up
automatically; valuable stuff, frequent enough; yes, but one doesn't want to lose the thread,
once one starts. Possibly ten days might be best.
But please understand that this suggestion arose solely from your own statement of what you
thought would help in your present circumstances. Anyway, as you say, decide! If it
is yes, I should like to see you before June 15 when I expect to go away for a few days; better
to give you some groundwork to keep you busy in my absence.
As Mejnour did to Glyndon, and with like results.
Love is the law, love under will.
Aug. 18, 1943 e.v.
Much thought has gone into the construction of your Motto. "I will become"
can be turned neatly enough as "Let there be;" by avoiding the First Pronoun one
gets the idea of "the absorption of the Self in the Beloved," which is exactly what
you want.
And which interestingly enough, by the way, is psychologically and anatomically a male,
rather than female, impulse. Crowley should not, however, have put a Motto in this lady's mouth in this way.
It is true that her first idea, "I will become," was basically egoic, but that is none of the instructor's business.
He used to play around like this, and the result was that the pupils often played around as well instead of
doing real work. He was, true, aware of the lady's egocentricity and tried in vain, with this device, to give
her a more mystic motivation; but it is better to watch the deeds, rather than the words.
Usually the Probationer has no real idea of his or her Will in joining the Order; very often they have no idea
whatsoever of what the Order really is: the sublimity of the A∴A∴ is beyond the conception
of any but the highest
type of Aspirant. This is why the Probationer is granted the privilege of changing his or her Motto on becoming a
Neophyte, something that one can normally do only when passing from the G.D. to the R.R. et A.C. and hence to
the S.S. The act of suggesting to a Probationer a Motto less stupid, and maybe even closer to his or her true
Aspiration than the one they chose themselves, often leads the personality into surly rebellion.
It is going to rebel all the way in any case!
Mr. Germer's original note reads: "In the original in Greek"
... pyramid, is that Force in its
geometrical form; in its biological form it is Φαλλος, ...
Mr. Germer's note: "In the original in Greek"
..., the Yang or Lingam. Both words have the same numerical value, 831. These two words
can therefore serve you as the secret object of your Work. How than can you construct
the number 831?
The Letter כ,...
..., Jupiter (Jehovah), the Wheel of Fortune in the Tarot—the Atu X is
a picture of the Universe built up and revolving by virtue of those Three Principles: Sulphur,
Mercury, Salt; or Gunas: Sattvas, Rajas, Tamas—has the value 20. So also has the
letter י spelt in full. (יוד)
One Gnostic secret way of spelling and pronouncing Jehovah is ΙΑΩ ...
... and
this has the value 811. So has "Let there be," Fiat, transliterating into
Greek. (ΦΙΑΤ)
Resuming all these ideas, it seems that you can express your aspiration
very neatly, very fully, by choosing for your motto the words FIAT YOD.
Which, in simple English, would be: "Let the penis manifest in me," or "May I develop the
male aspect of my nature." Feminists would do well to pay attention here. All this was probably Greek, to say
nothing of Hebrew, to the lady, who may even have interpreted the proposed motto as meaning that Crowley wanted
to stick his penis in her; this would put her at the same level of mentality of Kenneth Grant, Grady McMurtry and
Israel Regardie, but this level of mentality is about the level of the average low man, therefore the average low
woman as well. Nevertheless, it was a good try, and shows Crowley, the relentless promoter of true feminism, which
is to say true femininity or masculinity, which is to say balanced humanhood, still at work, tireless in spite of age,
disease, persecution and the "friendship" of Gerald Yorke, to say nothing of the chelaship of the aforementioned
featherless bipeds.
Love is the law, love under will.
P.S. Please study this letter, and these explanatory figures (the author, BAPHOMET X° O.T.O.,
in the original spells each word, giving the numerical equivalent of each letter in
pyramis, etc. This is here not copied.) and meditate upon them until you have fully assimilate not only the matter
under immediate consideration, but the general method of Qabalistic research and construction.
Note how new cognate ideas arise to enrich the formula.
Aug. 20, 1943 e.v.
Let me begin by referring to my letter about the motto and make clear to
you the working of this letter.
In this motto you have really got several ideas combined, and yet they are
really, of course, one idea. Fiat, being 811, is identical with IAO, and
therefore FIAT YOD might be read not only as "let there be" (or "Let me
become"), the secret source of all creative energy, but as "the secret
source of the energy of Jehovah." The two words together, having the value
of 831, they contain the secret meanings Pyramis and Phallos, which is the
same idea in different forms; thus you have three ways of expressing the
creative form, in its geometrical aspect, its human aspect, and its divine
aspect. I am making a point of this, because the working out of this motto
should give you a very clear idea of the sort of way in which Qabalah should
be used. I think it is rather useful to remember what the essence of the
Qabalah is in principle; thus, in your correspondence for Malkuth, Yesod,
and Hod you are simply writing down some of the ideas which pertain to the
numbers 10, 9, and 8 respectively. Naturally, there is a great deal of
redundancy and overloading as soon as you get to ideas important enough to
be comprehensive; as is mentioned in the article on the
Qabalah in "Equinox" Vol. I, No. 5, it is quite easy to prove 1 = 2 = 3 = 4,
etc.
Within the "universe of discourse" of the Qabalah, of course. But even in some forms of
Higher Mathematics the proposition can be proven - again, within a determined "universe of discourse."
Please keep in mind that although a universe of discourse may include several other universes of discourse,
the reasoning in the included ones should be strictly limited to their own boundaries; this is another form of
stating that the planes must not be mixed.
On the other hand, you must be careful to avoid taking the correspondences
given in the books of reference without thinking out why they are so given.
Thus, you find a camel in the number which refers to the Moon, but the Tarot
card "the Moon" refers not to the letter ג which means camel, but to
the letter ק, and the sign ♓ which means fish, while the letter
itself refers to the back of the head; and you also find fish has the
meaning of the letter נ. You must not go on from this, and say that the
back of your head is like a camel—the connection between them is simply
that they all refer to the same thing.
In studying the Qabalah you mention six months; I think after that time
you should be able to realize that, after six incarnations of uninterrupted
study, you may realize that you can never know it; as Confucius said about
the Yi King. "If a few more years were added to my life, I would
devote a hundred of them to the study of the Yi."
If, however, you work at the Qabalah in the same way as I did myself, in
season and out of season, you ought to get a very fair grasp of it in six
months. I will now tell you what this method is: as I walked about, I
made a point of attributing everything I saw to its appropriate idea. I
would walk out of the door of my house and reflect that door is ד,
and house ב; now the word "dob" ...
... is Hebrew for bear, and has the number
6, which refers to the Sun. Then you come to the fence of your property
and that is ח—number 8, number of Tarot Trump VII, which is the Chariot:
so you begin to look about for your car. Then you come to the street and
the first house you see is number 86, and that is Elohim, and it is built
of red brick which reminds you of ♂ and the Blasted Tower, and so on.
As soon as this sort of work, which can be done in a quite lighthearted
spirit, becomes habitual, you will find your mind running naturally in
this direction, and will be surprised at your progress. Never let your
mind wander from the fact that your Qabalah is not my Qabalah; a good
many of the things which I have noted may be useful to you, but you must
construct your own system so that it is a living weapon in your hand.
I think I am fair if I say that the first step on the Qabalah which may be
called success, is when you make an actual discovery which throws light on
some problem which has been troubling you. A quarter of a century ago I
was in New Orleans, and was very puzzled about my immediate course of action;
in fact I may say I was very much distressed. There seemed literally
nothing that I could do, so I bethought myself that I had better invoke
Mercury. As soon as I got into the appropriate frame of mind, it naturally
occurred to me, with a sort of joy, "But I am Mercury." I
put it into Latin— Mercurius sum, and suddenly something struck me,
a sort of nameless reaction which said: "That's not quite right."
Like a flash it came to me to put it into Greek, which gave me "'Ερμης
Ειμι" and adding that up rapidly, I got the number 418,
with all the marvellous correspondences which had been so abundantly useful to me
in the past (See Equ. of the Gods, p. 138). My troubles disappeared
like a flash of lightning.
Now to answer your questions seriatum; it is quite all right to put questions
to me about The Book of the Law; a very extended commentary has been written,
but it is not yet published. I shall probably be able to answer any of your
questions from the manuscript, but you cannot go on after that when it would become
a discussion; as they say in the law-courts, "You must take the witness's answer."
II. The Qabalah, both Greek and Hebrew, also very likely Arabic, was used
by the author of The Book of the Law. I have explained above the proper
use of the Qabalah. I cannot tell you how the early Rosicrucians used it,
but I think one may assume that their methods were not dissimilar to our
own. Incidentally, it is not very safe to talk about Rosicrucians, because
their name has become a signal for letting loose the most devastating floods
of nonsense. What is really known about the original Rosicrucians is
practically confined to the three documents which they issued. The eighteenth
century Rosicrucians
may, or may not, have been legitimate successors of the original brotherhood—I
don't know. But from them the O.T.O. derived its authority; The late O.H.O.
Theodor Reuss possessed a certain number of documents which demonstrated the
validity of his claim according to him; but I only saw two or three of them,
and they were not of very great importance. Unfortunately he died shortly
after the last War, and he had got out of touch with some of the other Grand Masters.
The documents did not come to me as they should have done ...
This remark should be clarified: before dying, Reuss appointed Crowley his Successor as O.H.O.;
and the O.H.O. is curator of all the property of the Order. The O.H.O. is not "elected," as Grady McMurtry
slyly tried to make believe in one of his "epistles" to his faithful: he is always appointed by his or her predecessor.
Only in the case the O.H.O. should die without appointing a successor are the National Grand Masters General to hold an
election to appoint one. Crowley appointed Karl Johannes Germer his Successor as O.H.O. unequivocally, in letters to
many pupils, Mr. McMurtry included; and Mr. Germer, also unequivocally, appointed me as his Successor on his deathbed,
as reported by his wife. The only reason why I have not assumed the title is that I have never wanted it; my interest
has always been the A∴A∴, not in the O.T.O., and I should like very much to do what many of my Brethren
and Sisters
have done before me, and Parsifal Krumm-Heller was fortunate enough to be able to do two decades ago, to wit: to vanish
from public view and lead my own magickal and spiritual life. But I am obligated by my Oath, and will stick around
until I can find a replacement. I am beginning to think that I will die before this happens, considering the astounding
rate at which all my pupils fail to qualify for any sort of responsible position. Character, alas, has never been an
abundant commodity, and in these days of "democracy" versus the "godless" it seems to become rarer every day.
I have met people of character in the course of my adventures, but none stupid enough to want to take my place.
Fools, of course, are always rushing in, the pests.
...; they were seized by his wife
who had an idea that she could sell them for a fantastic price; and we did not feel
inclined to meet her views. I don't think the matter is of very great importance,
the work being done by members of the Order all over the place is to me quite sufficient.
One can see that Theodor Reuss, albeit O.H.O., was not competent enough to choose a
proper mate for a man of his responsibilities; but the German O.T.O., with very few exceptions, notably
Karl Johannes Germer, were mostly ego-inflated masons with no dedication or higher capacity of any sort; about
on the level of the Grady McMurtrys, Israel Regardies and the average Grand Blah-Blah in the average "masonic lodge"
in the U.S.A. and everywhere else in the "free world."
III. The Ruach contains both the moral and intellectual worlds, which is
really all that we mean by the conscious mind; perhaps it even includes
certain portions of the subconscious.
The average reader may ask here, "But don't you know for sure?"
Of course he did not know for sure: Crowley invented parapsychology single-handedly;
he was the first Master to openly apply the Method of Science to the Aim of Religion.
Only future generations of researchers will be able to establish quantitative analysis of
the Ruach, as of other parts of the human being not as yet identified in the physical body.
Brain research will help, but unless the researchers have mystical or magickal training they
will miss much of the utmost importance.
IV. In initiation from the grade of Neophyte to that of Zelator, one passes
by this way. The main work is to obtain admission to, and control
of, the astral plane.
He is referring to the Path of ת, but in a sense totally beyond the average pupil's
capacity or experience.
Your expressions about "purifying the feelings" and so on are rather vague
to enter into a scientific system like ours. The result which you doubtless refer
to is attained automatically in the course of your experiments. Your very soon
discover the sort of state of mind which is favourable or unfavourable to the work,
and you also discover what is helpful and harmful to these states in your way of
life. For instance, the practice like the non-receiving of gifts is all right for
a Hindu whose mind is branded for ten thousand incarnations by the shock of accepting a
cigarette or a cup of tea. Incidentally, most of the Eastern cults fall down when
they come West, simply because they make no allowance for our different temperaments.
Also they set tasks which are completely unsuitable to Europeans—an immense amount
of disappointment has been caused by failure to recognize these facts.
One of the many reasons why the "gurujis" and "maharishis" are so "successful" is
that they are not even genuine followers of their own oriental systems. Their cynicism is very similar
to that of the Romish Popes, who have always been fully aware that "Jesus" is nothing but a useful fiction.
Useful to them!
Your sub-questions a, b, and c are really answered by the above. All the
terms you use are very indefinite. I hope it will not take too long to get you out
of the way of thinking in these terms. For instance, the word "initiation"
includes the whole process, and how to distinguish between it and enlightenment I cannot
tell you. "Probation," moreover, if it means "proving," continues
throughout the entire process. Nothing is worse for the student than to indulge in
these wild speculations about ambiguous terms.
V. You can, if you like, try to work out a progress of Osiris through Amennti on
the Tree of Life, but I doubt whether you will get any satisfactory result.
Because at her stage of "advancement" she not only would fail to recognize
landmarks, she did not even realize exactly what the Osiris is, or Amennti is, or the Tree of Life itself is...
It seems to me that you should confine yourself very closely to the actual
work in front of you. At the present moment, of course, this includes a
good deal of general study; but my point is that the terms employed in
that study should always be capable of precise definition. I am not sure
whether you have my "Little Essays Toward Truth" ...
This slim volume of essays is essential to anyone who would study the O.T.O.
as reformulated by Crowley to follow the philosophy of Θελημα.
A new edition shall be duly
issued as part of this Oriflamme volume.
... The first essay in the book entitled "Man"
gives a full account of the five principles which go to make up Man according to the
Qabalistic system. I have tried to define these terms as accurately as possible,
and I think you will find them, in any case, clearer than those to which you have become
accustomed with the Eastern systems. ...
He is here talking about the translations of those terms, especially the grandiloquent
idiocy of the Leadbeaters and the Besants.
... In India, by the way, no attempt is ever made
to use these vague terms. They always have a very clear idea of what is meant by
words like "Buddhi," "Manas" and the like. Attempts at translation
are very unsatisfactory. I find that even with such a simple matter as the
"Eight limbs of Yoga," as you will see when you come to read my "Eight Lectures".
This book, also, will soon be reprinted by us with annotations.
It complements Book Four Part One fully.
I am very pleased with your illustrations; that is excellent practice for you.
Presently you have to make talismans, and a Lamen for yourself, and even to devise a seal
to serve as what you might call a magical coat-of-arms, and all this sort of thing is very
helpful.
It occurs to me that so far we have done nothing about the astral plane and this path of
Tau of which you speak. Have you had any experience of travelling in the astral?
If not, do you think that you can begin by yourself on the lines laid down in Liber O,
sections 5 and 6?
(See Magick, pp. 387-9). If not you had better let me take you through the first
gates. The question of noise instantly arises; I think we should have to do it not
earlier than nine o'clock at night, and I don't know whether you can manage this.
Love is the law, love under will.
September 4, 1943 e.v.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"shall be" (instead of "Do what thou wilt is ...") not
"is." See Liber AL, I, 36, 54, and II, 54.
Not "Master Perdurabo": see BOOK FOUR PART III p. XXIX. "Care Frater" is
enough.
All this is normal, tiresomely normal instruction. I must have given it myself one thousand
times at least - I don't think it would so often bore me shitless otherwise. "shall Be," not "is," is used in
Liber AL,
for multiple motives, the foremost of which are: it makes the statement of the Law a "Becoming," not a "Being"
proposition, a dynamic - Theurgic - not dogmatic proposition; and it warns you to be wary lest you become as
self-satisfied as the "Popes" or Jerry Falwell, Or Phyllis Schlafly, or Menachem Begin, or Ronald Reagan.
We want Theurgy, not Dogma, and if you can't understand "why" we so arbitrarily restrict your choice of theology
you should go apply for membership in the F.B.I., or the C.I.A., or Shin Beth, or the K.G.B., or
the "College of Cardinals," or anywhere else you may wish to, except the O.T.O., or the A∴A∴, or any
other Thelemic Order. "Care Frater," not "Master Perdurabo" for several motives. One, because Perdurabo
was not even an adept: this was Crowley's Motto in the Outer Order, the G.D.; another, because even if Perdurabo
was a Master, only an Exempt Adept would be able to address him as such, and this address would be done an
altogether different level of discourse...
To make it short, and before you accuse me of nit-picking, please try to keep in mind that our rules were not laid
out in the manner of the average crapulous creed or government bureaucracy: they were deeply thought out and
established
for very serious purposes which, if you follow our rules to the letter and thereby come to perceive their intent,
might
even seem agreeable to you. What is extremely annoying is to have people come to us pretending that they want to
join us
but showing total disregard for our rules and regulations, to say nothing of our aims. It makes for waste of time and
energy all around. You may have time and energy to waste, but we don't.
"Care Frater" is Latin for "Dear Brother," and if the instructor be female the address is "Cara Soror," which
means "Dear Sister." Now, try to be honest in this address, and don't do like Grady McMurtry, who can open a letter
with "Most Illustrious, Excellent, etc., etc., Brother" and proceed to show that he intends to treat you in a very
unbrotherly manner. Again, this kind of thing is good for the Popes, American Presidents and Politsburo members, but
it is not for us. We number fools, Fools, grouches and babes among us; but we number
neither flatterers nor hypocrites.
777 is practically unpurchaseable: copies fetch £10 or so...
Much more now for the original edition. 777 Revised, which included material not in the
original edition, has been pirated by Samuel Weiser, Inc. - naturally, with an "introduction" by Mr. Israel Regardie,
who condescendingly praises a book from which he extracted the little of the Qabalah he knows.
The O.T.O. plans a new edition, to be called 777 Revised Two, including new important tables of
correspondences produced by A∴A∴ researchers in the last thirty years. It is to be hoped that it will
not be pirated by Donald Weiser, or introduced by Mr. Regardie.
... Nearly all
important correspondences are in Book 4 Part III Table I...
Important for the beginner, that is.
... The other 2 books are being
sent at once. "Working out games with numbers." I am sorry you should
see no more than this. When you are better equipped, you will see that the Qabalah is
the best (and almost the only) means by which an intelligence can identify itself.
And Gematria methods serve to discover spiritual truths. Numbers are the network of
the structure of the Universe, and their relations the form of expression of our Understanding
of it...
A note by Mr. Germer reads: "He gives the numerical value of the letters of the Greek
alphabet - not copied here."
... In Greek and Hebrew there is no other way of writing
numbers; our 1, 2, 3 etc. comes from the Phoenicians through the Arabs. You need no
more of Greek and Hebrew than these values, some sacred words—knowledge grows by
use—and books of reference.
One cannot set a pupil definite tasks beyond the groundwork I am giving you, and we
should find this correspondence taking clear shape of its own accord. You have really
more than you can do already. And I can only tell you what the right tasks—out
of hundreds—are by your own reactions to your own study and practice.
"Osiris in Amennti"—see the Book of the Dead. I meant you might
try to trace a parallelism between his journeyings and the Path of Initiation.
Astral travel—development of the Astral Body is essential to research;
and, above all, to the attainment of "the Knowledge and Conversation of the
Holy Guardian Angel."
You ought to demonstrate your performance of the Pentagram Ritual to me; you are
probably making any number of mistakes. I will, of course, take you carefully
through the O.T.O. rituals to III° as soon as you are fairly familiar with them.
The plan of the grades is this:—
We know that the prurience of thieves like Regardie, Grant, Symonds and Francis
King has led everybody to believe that sex is the central secret of practical Magick, but the subject is a
little more extensive than that. After all, if the "central secret" were sex, Messrs. Regardie, McMurtry and
Grant, and Mesdames Parsons-Smith and Wade-Seckler-McMurtry must have been practicing it for years. And since
they achieved no more by it than the distinctions of being liars, thieves, hypocrites or all three at once, there
must be something missing in this "central secret." Perhaps they should go and consult Masters & Johnson to find
out what they are doing that isn't quite right!
There is thus no connection with the A∴A∴ system and the Tree of Life.
Of course, there are certain analogies.
Your suggested method of study: you have got my idea quite well. But nobody
can "take you through" the Grades of A∴A∴. The Grades confirm
your attainments as you make them; then, the new tasks appear. See "One
Star in Sight".
Love is the law, love under will.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of yestere'en came to gladden me just when the whole evening lay
blank before me: the one job such a big job that I simply can't get down
to it until I get help: How annoying! Still, yours the gain!
1. That verse (AL I 44) condenses
the whole magical technique. It makes clear — when you have understood
it—the secret of success in the Great Work. Of course at first
it appears a paradox. You must have an aim, and one aim only: yet on
no account must you want to achieve it!!!
Those chapters of The Book of Lies quoted in my last letter ...
A note by Mr. Germer reads: "A letter dated Oct. 12, '43 e.v., constituted No. 48 in
Magick
Without Tears, and the following chapters from the Book of Lies: - Peaches, Pilgrim-Talk, Buttons and Rosettes,
The Gun-Barrel and the Mountaineer." In his "edition" of this book, Regardie cut out any reference to the
chapters quoted. Yet, they are essential to an understanding of what Crowley means in both this letter and Letter
no. 48, q.v.
... do throw some light onto this Abyss of self-contradiction; and there is meaning much
deeper than the contrast between the Will with a capital W, and desire, want, or velleity ...
The dictionary definition of velleity is "A mere wish, unaccompanied by the effort of
action necessary to accomplish it."
... The main point seems to be that in aspiring to Power one is limited by the True Will. If
you use force, violating your own nature either from lack of understanding or from petulant whim,
one is merely wasting energy; things go back to normal as soon as the stress is removed.
This is one small case of the big Equation "Free Will = Necessity" (Fate, Destiny, or
Karma: it's all much the same idea). One is most rigidly bound by the causal chain that
has dragged one to where one is; but it is one's own self that has forged the links.
The point is that unless the individual develops knowledge of that part of the self
which forges the links, he or she may either be totally impotent in life or deviate completely from the
path of his or her own soul. This is an ad for parapsycho-analysis, that is to say, initiation.
Please refrain from the obvious retort: "Then, in the long run, you can't possibly go
wrong: so it doesn't matter what you do." Perfectly true, of course! (There
is no single grain of dust that shall not attain to Buddhahood:" with some such words
did the debauched old reprobate seek to console himself when Time began to take its revenge.) ...
He is referring to Gautama Buddha, who must already have been in the throes of indigestion
when he uttered this "consoling" phrase. If he ever did utter it.
... But the answer is simple enough: you happen to be the kind of being that thinks it does matter
what course you steer; or, still more haughtily, you enjoy the pleasure of sailing.
No, there is this factor in all success: self-confidence. If we analyze this,
we find that it means that one is aware that all one's mental and physical faculties are
working harmoniously. The deadliest and subtlest enemy of that feeling is anxiety
about the result; the finest gauze of doubt is enough to dim one's vision, to throw the
entire field out of focus. Hence, even to be aware that there is a result in
prospect must militate against that serenity of spirit which is the essence of self-confidence.
As you will know, all our automatic physiological functions are deranged if one is aware of
This then, is the difficulty, to enjoy consciously while not disturbing the process
involved. The obvious physical case is the sexual act: perhaps its chief importance
is just that it is a type of this exceptional spiritual-mental condition. I hope, however,
that you will remember what I have said on the subject in paragraphs 15–17 of my Third Lecture
on "Yoga for Yellowbellies" ...
...; there is a way of obtaining ecstacy from the most
insignificant physiological function...
Please understand that the word 'ecstasy' in not necessarily connected with
physical sexual activity.
... Observe that in transferring the whole consciousness
to (say) one's little finger or big toe is not trying to interfere with the normal exercise of
its activities, but only to realize what is going on in the organism, the exquisite pleasure
of a function in its normal activity...
If the essence of organized matter's smallest movements were not pleasure,
life would not exist in the Universe as we know it. In a very real sense this is what is meant by
the apparently high-sounding phrase, "The essence of Existence is joy;" or, as it is even better put
by the author of The Book of the Law, "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy."
... With a little imagination one can conceive the
analogical case of the Universe itself; and, still less fettered by even the mildest limitation
which material symbols necessarily (however little) suggest, "Remember all ye that existence
is pure joy." (AL II 9)
It is important to understand that this is a scientifically ascertainable fact,
not an empty theological promise. Even cancerous cells have joy in organizing themselves; the fact
that the body undergoing the process does not as a whole enjoy it is just a part of the Universal Joke.
But unless complicated by external factors, cancer is a psychosomatic disease. Cancer in the body usually
reflects a conflict in the soul, which is perhaps the reason why cancer is quickly becoming the most common
disease of our times.
Is it too bold to suggest that the gradual merging of all these Ways into an interwoven
unity may be taken as one mode of presentation of the Accomplishment of the Great Work itself?
At least, I feel fairly satisfied the meditation of them severally and jointly may help
you to an answer to your first question.
2. Most people in my experience either cook up a hell-broth of self-induced obstacles to
success in Astral traveling, or else shoot forth on the wings of romantic imagination and fool
themselves for the rest of their lives in the manner of the Village Idiot. Yours, luckily,
is the former trouble.
But—is it plain obstinacy?—you do not exercise the sublime Art of Guru-bullying.
You should have made one frenzied leap to my dying bed, thrust aside the cohorts of Mourning
Archimandrites, and wrung my nose until I made you do it.
This is a reference to an eastern apologue about a dying master with the "Secret" yet untold.
You can find the secret clearly revealed in the poem called "The Disciples" in Eq. I, 10 and "The Secret"
in Olla. However, the Art of Guru-bullying is indeed a noble art. I wish I had practiced it more often.
And you repeatedly insist that it is difficult. It isn't. Is there, however, some
deep-seated inhibition—a (Freudian) fear of success? Is there some connection with
that sense of guilt which is born in all but the very few?
The innate sense of guilt is a result of extended pruning of the population of Europe
during the religious persecutions and relentless genocide practiced by the Christists.
A child born unashamed and happy was immediately suspected and "humbled," and watched carefully to see how
it would grow. If you look around you, or think back to your own childhood, you will see that this method
of child-rearing is still widely practiced. I know it was practiced with me.
But you don't give it a fair chance. There is, I admit, some trick, or knack, about
getting properly across; a faculty which one acquires (as a rule) quite suddenly and
unexpectedly. Rather like mastering some shots at billiards. Practice has
taught me how to communicate this to students; only in rare cases does one fail.
(It's incredible: one man simply could not be persuaded that intense physical exertion
was the wrong way to to it. There he sat, with the veins on his forehead almost
on the point of bursting, and the arms of my favourite chair visibly trembling beneath
his powerful grip!) In your case, I notice that you have got this practice mixed up
with Dharana: you write of "Emptying my mind of everything except the one idea,
etc." Then you go on: "The invoking of a supersensible Being is impossible
to me as yet." The impudence! The arrogance! How do you know, pray
madam? (Dial numbers at random: the results are often surprisingly delightful!)
Besides, I didn't ask you to invoke a supersensible (what a word! Meaning?) Being right
away, or at any time: that supersensible is getting on my nerves: do you mean "not
in normal circumstances to be apprehended by the senses?" I suppose so.
In a word: do fix a convenient season for going on the Astral Plane under my eye: half
an hour (with a bit of luck) on not more than four evenings would put you in a very
different frame of mind. You will soon "feel your feet" and then "get
your sea-legs" and then, much sooner than you think
"Afloat in the aethyr, O my God! my God!" . . . . .
"White swan, bear thou ever me up between thy wings!"
3. Now then to your old Pons Asinorum about the names of the Gods!...
"Pons Asinorum" is Latin for "asses' bridge."
The reference is actually to the first theorem of Euclid: it was believed that if a student were
able to understand its demonstration he or she would be able to follow the demonstrations of geometry
and mathematics without too great difficulty. This was perhaps optimistic on the part of teachers.
The expression came to mean "something not particularly difficult except for absolute beginners."
It is in this sense that Crowley uses it here.
... Stand in the corner
for half an hour with your face to the wall! Stay in after school and write Malka
be-Tharshishim v-Ruachoth b-Schehalim 999 times!
Every name is a number: and "Every number is infinite; there is no difference."
(AL I 4). But one Name, or system of Names, may be more convenient either (a) to you
personally or (b) to the work you are at. For example, I have very little sympathy with
Jewish Theology or ritual; but the Qabalah is so handy and congenial that I use it more than
almost any—or all the others together—for daily use and work. The Egyptian
Theogony is the noblest, the most truly magical, the most bound to me (or rather I to it) by
some inmost instinct ...
Because the Egyptian Theogony was democratic, rather than autocratic as the Jewish Theology is.
In the Jewish pantheon there is only one God — Jehovah. (That Jehovah happens to be merely Amon-Ra
"without-teared"
by Moses down to the mentality of the slaves he was experimenting on is too long a story for this note; it would take
a whole book, and would have to involve the politics of the Egyptian priesthood into the bargain.)
In the Egyptian Theogony, the Gods — include Goddesses — succeed each other as leaders.
This is what is called the
Succession of the Aeons. The "Throne of Ra" is successively occupied by different deities, and the Throne of Ra is
called the "Throne of the Unknown God" precisely to leave open the options. This means freedom, variety and
opportunity. The tyranny of Jehovah, of course, is comfortable for those who do not wish to think for themselves or
branch out into unknown, therefore terrible, territory; but just as not every Jew is a bourgeois or an admirer of
Menachem Begin, not every human being yearns for safety in life above all things.
... and by the memory of my incarnation as Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, that I use it
(with its Græco-Phoenician child) for all work of supreme import. Why stamp my
vitals, madam! The Abramelin Operation itself turned into this form before I could so
much as set to work on it! Like the Duchess' baby (excuse this enthusiasm; but you have
aroused the British Lion-Serpent.)
"Stamp my vitals" is an old English oath, and is probably related, as most such oaths,
to archetypical myths. Cf. "the Woman who bruises the Head of the Serpent." "The Duchess's baby" is a
character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; but here is a Crowley pun and a joke on the morals -
and sexual technique - and the ideas of education - of the aristocracy.
Note, please, that the equivalents given in 777 are not always exact. Tahuti
is not quite Thoth, still less Hermes; Mercury is a very much more comprehensive idea, but not
nearly so exalted: Hanuman hardly at all. Nor is Tetragrammaton IAO, though even etymology
asserts the identity.
This is related to the fact that different cultural groups evolve different interpretations of
the "Archetypes;" quite often, through the dynamism provided to the group-mind by the life and passion of some
particular individual, of either - or any - sex. The "Archetypes," of course, are not "eternal verities" except
for the human species; at least, not until we have enough wisdom and humility to check, for instance, the opinion
of the cetaceans. But since the cetaceans and we stem from the same source, and indeed are very closely related,
we may have to wait for the opinion of aliens from outer space - meaning beyond our solar system - before
formulating a system of truly cosmic significance. Meanwhile, our pantheons work well enough - for us.
As long as we do not mix up our universes of discourse, that is.
In these matters you must be catholic, eclectic, even syncretic ...
Now, come on! Go to your dictionary. It will do you good to learn the meaning of a
few words on your own. And perhaps you will be able to ponder how the Roman "Catholic" Church has entirely
lost the definition of the word "catholic," to say nothing of the words "syncretic" and "eclectic."
Or of the word "Church."
And you must consider
the nature of your work. If I wanted to evoke Taphthartharath, there would be little help
indeed from any but the Qabalistic system; for that spirit's precise forms and numbers are not
to be found in any other.
The converse, however, is not so true. The Qabalah, properly understood, properly treated,
is so universal that one can vamp up a ritual to suit almost "any name and form." ...
This will become even more so with our publication of our researches on the Shih Yi Jien.
... But in such a case one may expect to have to reinforce it by a certain amount of historical,
literary, or philosophic study—and research.
4. Quite right, dear lady, about your incarnation memories acting as a "Guide to the Way
Back." Of course, if you "missed an Egyptian Incarnation," you would not be
so likely to be a little Martha, worried "about much serving." Don't get surfeited
with knowledge, above all things; it is so very fascinating, so dreadfully easy; and the danger of
becoming a pedant—"Deuce take all your pedants! say I." Don't "dry-rot
at ease 'till the Judgment Day."
Both quotations are from Shakespeare. Pedants become pedants because they are totally
self-satisfied. This does not mean that a pedant may not know a lot. You may learn from a pedant - but you
will stop learning from the pedant as soon as you reach his or her limits. Furthermore, you will be wise to
conceal the fact that you have reached that particular mind's limits from that mind; for pedants are vindictive.
They are perfectly aware of the fact that they don't know all, but they are afraid to learn more, and they do not
welcome being reminded of their cowardice. Pedants put Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich in the asylum, Crowley in infamy,
and Regardie in the "Literary Who's Who." They always know their own.
No, I will NOT recommend a book. It should not hurt you too much to browse on condensed
hay (or thistles) ...
He is calling her an ass, with good reason; but it is the ass of the fable.
... such as articles in Encyclopedias. Take Roget's Thesaurus or
Smith's Smaller Classical Dictionary (and the like) to read yourself to sleep on.
But don't stultify yourself by taking up such study too seriously. You only make yourself
ridiculous by trying to do at 50 what you ought to have done at 15. As you didn't—tant
pis! ...
... You can't possibly get the spirit; if you could, it would mean merely mental
indigestion. We have all read how Cato started to learn Greek at 90: but the story stops
there. We have never been told what good it did to himself or anyone else.
This is not necessarily true in all cases, especially nowadays when we know much more about
nutrition and the brain; but it was certainly true of that particular lady at that particular time; and of poor
Cato in his time.
5. God-forms. See Book Four Part III. Quite clear: quite adequate: no use at
all without continual practice. No one can join with you - off you go again! ...
Meaning, wanting him to hold her hand while she works.
... No, no, a
thousand times no: this is the practice par excellence where you have to do it all yourself. ...
"Par excellence" = especially. Crowley's continuous insertion of French expressions in his
speech to this lady is not particularly "learned" and certainly not pedantic. England is just across the Channel
from France, the two countries have been friendly enemies for centuries, and it is but two or three hours nowadays
by sea and ten minutes by air from one to the other. Expressions in each other's language are quite familiar on
both sides. In 1943 e.v. this was especially so, since the Free French were quartered in England under De Gaulle.
... The Vibration of God-names: that perhaps, I can at least test you in. But don't you dare
come up for a test until you've been at it—and hard—for at least 100 exercises.
The next three paragraphs are missing in Mr. Regardie's "edition" of this book, perhaps because
they state unequivocally that the work of the pupil is more important than the learning of the teacher. Either he
remembered his own laziness or was trying to shield his self-importance.
I think this is your trouble about being "left in the air." When I "present
many new things" to you, the sting is in the tail—the practice that vitalizes it.
Doctrinal stuff is fine "Lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily, in the noo-on-dye shaun!" ...
Allusion to one of "Uncle Remus's" tales and imitating Southern American Negro dialect.
... An ounce of your practice is worth a ton of my teaching. GET THAT. It's all
your hatred
of hard work:
I am sure that Solomon was too good a poet, and too experienced a Guru, to tail off with the
anticlimax "wise."
In the original letter, Crowley finished off the quotation with the word "buggered." In the
prurient, witch-hunting American Fifties Mr. Germer thought it prudent not to include the word. Regardie did
away with the quotation altogether.
6. Minerval. What is the matter? All you have to do is understand it:
just a dramatization of the process of incarnation. Better run through it with me:
I'll make it clear, and you can make notes of your troubles and their solution for the use of
future members.
7. The Book of Thoth Surely all terms not in a good dictionary are explained
in the text. I don't see what I can do about it, in any case; the same criticism would
apply to (say) Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Physics, wouldn't it?
Is x an R-ancestor of y if y has every R-hereditary that x has, provided x is a term which has
the relation R to something or to which something has the relation R? (Enthusiastic cries of
"Yes, it is!") He says "A number is anything which has the number of some
class." Feel better now?
His innate kindness then asserts itself.
Still, it would be kind of you to go through a page or so with me, and tell
me where the shoe pinches. Of course I have realized the difficulty long
ago; but I don't know the solution—or if there is a solution. I did
think of calling Magick "Magick Without Tears"; and I did
try having my work cross-examined as I went on by minds of very inferior education or
capacity. In fact, Parts I and II of Book 4 were thus tested.
But not, obviously, Part III. Part IV is much more accessible to the average American Ph.D.
in these days of "progressive education." The next paragraph was omitted in Mr. Regardie's "edition".
What about applying the Dedekindian cut to this letter? I am sure you would not wish
it to develop into a Goclenian Sorites, especially as I fear that I may already have deviated
from the δια παντος Hapaxlegomenon.
The references are to the Greek text of Aristotle's Logic, and Mr. Germer added a note
that the Greek words were written in Greek in the original. It must all have been Greek to her.
One wonders if she realized he was pulling her lower extremity or extremities, and if she took advantage
of the monumental offer of going through some pages of The Book of Thoth with him. Apparently she bought a copy.
Only two hundred were printed, and they now sell - when they sell - for over a thousand dollars each.
Love is the law, love under will.
January 27, 1944 e.v.
It is very good hearing that these letters do good, but rather sad to reflect
that it is going to make you so unpopular. Your friends will notice at once
that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you.
It's worth it.
Yes, your brain is quite all right; what is wanted is to acquire the habit
of pinning things down instantly. (He says 're-incarnation'—now what
exactly does he mean by that? He says "it is natural to suppose . . . ":
what is "natural", and what is implied by supposition?) Practice this style
of criticism; write down what happens. Within a week or two you will be
astounded to discover that you have got what is apparently little less than
a new brain! You must make this a habit, not letting anything get by the
sentries.
Indeed, I want you to go even further; make sure of what is meant by even the
simplest words. Trace the history of the word with the help of Skeat's Etymological
Dictionary. E.g. "pretty" means tricky, deceitful; on the other hand,
"hussy" is only "housewife." It's amusing, too, this "tabby"
refers to Prince Attab, the grandson of Ommeya—the silk quarter of Baghdad where utabi,
a rich watered silk was sold. This will soon give you the power of discerning instantly
when words are being used to hide meaning or lack of it.
This paragraph and the postscript were cut out by Mr. Regardie, presumably because
he did not want to give offense to some of his friends:
About A∴A∴, etc.: your resolution is noble, but there is a letter ready for you which
deals with what is really a legitimate enquiry; necessary, too, with so many hordes of "Hidden
Masters" and "Mahatmas" and so on scurrying all over the floor in the hope of
distracting attention from the inanities of their trusted henchmen.
Love is the law, love under will.
P.S. I must write at length about the Higher Self or "God within us,",
too easy to get muddled about it, and the subject requires careful preparation.
Actually, he had to write several. See Letters 28. 36, 42, and 43.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
What is Magick? Why should anyone study and practice it? Very natural;
the obvious preliminary questions of any subject soever. We must certainly
get all this crystal clear; fear not that I shall fail to set forth the whole
business as concisely as possible yet as fully, as cogently yet as lucidly,
as may prove within my power to do.
At least I need not waste any time on telling you what Magick is not;
or to go into the story of how the word came to be misapplied to conjuring tricks,
and to sham miracles such as are to this day foisted by charlatan swindlers,
either within or without the Roman Communion, upon a gaping crew of pious
imbeciles.
First let me go all Euclidean, and rub your nose in the Definition, Postulate
and Theorems given in my comprehensive (but, alas! too advanced and too technical)
Treatise on the subject ....
I. DEFINITION:
MAGICK
is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge.
I therefore take "magical weapons," pen, ink, and paper; I write
"incantations"—these sentences—in the "magical language" i.e.
that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. I call forth "spirits" such
as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to
those people. The composition and distribution is thus an act of
MAGICK -
by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.
In one sense, Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.)
The difference is mainly one of purpose, not of matter. Science is the observation and
study of Nature. Applied Science is, on one level, technology; on several other levels, Magick.
II. POSTULATE:
ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind
and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to
the proper object.
(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I
must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in
sufficient quantity and of adequate strength, and place it, in a vessel
which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce
undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold, and so forth.
Every Change has its own conditions.
In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible
in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin,
or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in
any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions
are covered by the above postulate.)
III. THEOREMS:
1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act.
In the original edition a footnote to this was switched by mistake
for the previous remark on Magick being the name given to Science by the vulgar.
The footnote reads: "By intentional I mean 'willed'. But even unintentional acts so-seeming
are not truly so. Thus, breathing is an act of the Will-to-Live." And developing a disease
may be an act of the Will-to-Die.
Illustration: See "Definition" above.)
2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.
(Illustrations: There may be failure to understand the case; as when a doctor makes
a wrong diagnosis, and his treatment injures his patient. There may be failure to
apply the right kind of force, as when a rustic tries to blow out an electric light.
There may be failure to apply the right degree of force, as when a wrestler has his hold
broken. There may be failure to apply the force in the right manner, as when one
presents a cheque at the wrong window of the Bank. There may be failure to employ
the correct medium, as when Leonardo da Vinci found his masterpiece fade away. The
force may be applied to an unsuitable object, as when one tries to crack a stone, thinking
it a nut.)
4. The first requisite for causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative
understanding of the condition.
(Illustration: The most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one's own True
Will, or of the means by which to fulfill that Will. A man may fancy himself a painter,
and waste his life trying to become one; or he may be really a painter, and yet fail to
understand and to measure the difficulties peculiar to that career.)
5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right
motion the necessary forces.
(Illustration: A banker may have a perfect grasp of a given situation, yet lack the quality
of decision, or the assets, necessary to take advantage of it.)
6. "Every man and every woman is a star." That is to say, every human
being is intrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character and proper
motion.
7. Every man and every woman has a course, depending partly on the self, and partly
on the environment which is natural and necessary for each. Anyone who is forced from
his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes
into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly.
(Illustration: A man may think it his duty to act in a certain way, through having made
a fancy picture of himself, instead of investigating his actual nature. For example,
a woman may make herself miserable for life by thinking that she prefers love to social
consideration, or vice versa. One woman may stay with an unsympathetic husband when
she would really be happy in an attic with a lover, while another may fool herself into a
romantic elopement when her only true pleasures are those of presiding at fashionable functions.
Again, a boy's instinct may tell him to go to sea, while his parents insist on his becoming a
doctor. In such a case, he will be both unsuccessful and unhappy in medicine.
8. A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength.
He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently.
(Illustration: When Civil War rages in a nation, it is in no condition to undertake the
invasion of other countries. A man with cancer employs his nourishment alike to his own
use and to that of the enemy which is part of himself. He soon fails to resist the
pressure of his environment. In practical life, a man who is doing what his conscience
tells him to be wrong will do it very clumsily. At first!)
Mr. Regardie, for instance, "improved" with practice.
9. A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.
(Illustration: The first principle of success in evolution is that the individual
should be true to his own nature, and at the same time adapt himself to his environment.)
But if the environment is decidedly hostile to the individual's True Will, then it is
necessary to change the environment or be restricted by it. This is the entire point of technology or of Magick.
10. Nature is a continuous phenomenon, thought we do not know in all cases how things are
connected.
(Illustration: Human consciousness depends on the properties of protoplasm, the existence
of which depends on innumerable physical conditions peculiar to this planet; and this planet
is determined by the mechanical balance of the whole universe of matter. We may then say
that our consciousness is causally connected with the remotest galaxies; yet we do not know
even how it arises from—or with—the molecular changes in the brain.)
11. Science enables us to take advantage of the continuity of Nature by the empirical
application of certain principles whose interplay involves different orders of idea,
connected with each other in a way beyond our present comprehension.
(Illustration: We are able to light cities by rule-of-thumb methods.
We do not know what consciousness is, or how it is connected with muscular
action; what electricity is or how it is connected with the machines that
generate it; and our methods depend on calculations involving mathematical
ideas which have no correspondence in the Universe as we know it.
Here he added the footnote: "For instance, 'irrational,' 'unreal,' and 'infinite' expressions."
These are all types of advanced mathematic operations without which the study of physics, specially nuclear physics,
would be still at eighteenth century level.
12. Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers.
Even his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the past.
and every step in his progress extends his empire. There is, therefore,
no reason to assign theoretical limits to what he may be,
or to what he may do.
Here he added another footnote: "i.e. except - possibly - in the case of logically absurd
questions, such as the schoolmen discussed in connection with 'God'".
(Illustration: Two generations ago it was supposed theoretically
impossible that man should ever know the chemical composition of
the fixed stars. It is known that our senses are adapted to receive
only an infinitesimal fraction of the possible rates of vibration.
Modern instruments have enabled us to detect some of these suprasensibles
by indirect methods, and even to use their peculiar qualities in the service
of man, as in the case of the rays of Hertz and Roentgen ...
Respectively, radio waves and x-rays.
As Tyndall
said, man might at any moment learn to perceive and utilize vibrations of all
conceivable and inconceivable kinds. The question of Magick is a question
of discovering and employing hitherto unknown forces in nature. We know that they exist,
and we cannot doubt the possibility of mental or physical instruments capable of bringing us
in relation with them.)
13. Every man is more or less aware that his individuality comprises
several orders of existence, even when he maintains that his subtler
principles are merely symptomatic of the changes in his gross vehicle.
A similar order may be assumed to extend throughout nature.
(Illustration: One does not confuse the pain of toothache with the
decay which causes it. Inanimate objects are sensitive to certain
physical forces, such as electrical and thermal conductivity; but
neither in us nor in them—so far as we know—is there any direct
conscious perception of these forces. Imperceptible influences are
therefore associated with all material phenomena; and there is no
reason why we should not work upon matter through those subtle energies
as we do through their material bases. In fact, we use magnetic
force to move iron, and solar radiation to reproduce images.)
14. Man is capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives;
for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his
being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious
to his individual Will.
(Illustration: Man has used the idea of God to dictate his personal
conduct, to obtain power over his fellows, to excuse his crimes, and
for innumerable other purposes, including that of realizing himself
as God. He has used the irrational and unreal conceptions of mathematics
to help him in the construction of mechanical devices. He has used his
moral force to influence the actions even of wild animals. He has
employed poetic genius for political purposes.)
15. Every force in the Universe is capable of being transformed
into any other kind of force by using suitable means. There is thus
an inexhaustible supply of any particular kind of force that we may
need.
(Illustration: Heat may be transformed into light and power by
using it to drive dynamos. The vibrations of the air may be used
to kill men by so ordering them in speech as to inflame war-like
passions. The hallucinations connected with the mysterious energies
of sex result in the perpetuation of the species.)
16. The application of any given force affects all the orders of
being which exist in the object to which it is applied, whichever
of those orders is directly affected.
(Illustration: If I strike a man with a dagger, his consciousness,
not his body only, is affected by my act; although the dagger, as
such, has no direct relation therewith. Similarly, the power of my
thought may so work on the mind of another person as to produce far-
reaching physical changes in him or her, or in others through him or her.)
17. A man (human being) may learn to use any force so as to serve any purpose,
by taking advantage of the above theorems.
(Illustration: A man may use a razor to make himself vigilant over
his speech, by using it to cut himself whenever he unguardedly utters
a chosen word. He may serve the same purpose by resolving that every
incident of his life shall remind him of a particular thing, Making
every impression the starting point of a connected series of thoughts
ending in that thing. He might also devote his whole energies to
some particular object, by resolving to do nothing at variance
therewith, and to make every act turn to the advantage of that object.)
18. He may attract to himself any force of the Universe by making
himself a fit receptacle for it, establishing a connection with it,
and arranging conditions so that its nature compels it to flow toward
him.
(Illustration: If I want pure water to drink, I dig a well in a
place where there is underground water; I prevent it from leaking
away; and I arrange to take advantage of water's accordance with
the laws of Hydrostatics to fill it.)
19. Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the
Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him.
This is another and most important argument against any kind of religious dogma that
considers anything in the Universe as intrinsically "evil" or "hostile" to the progress of the human being
or the "welfare" of our souls. The progress of science in the West, for instance, was only possible after the
decay of Christism. Attempts to reinstitute medieval religion, such as that of the "Moral Majority" nowadays
in the U.S.A., are invariably accompanied by attempts to deny or weaken science or true humanism, which derives
from science.
(Illustration: A popular leader is most successful when he forgets
himself, and remembers only "The Cause." Self-seeking engenders
jealousies and schism. When the organs of the body assert their
presence otherwise than by silent satisfaction, it is a sign that they are
diseased. The single exception is the organ of reproduction ...
Not so: All the organs of elimination, of which the organ of reproduction is just one
particular case. If defecation and urination, for instance, were not pleasurable acts in any living organism,
it would not survive for long the accumulation of catabolic products in itself.
... Yet even in this case self-assertion bears witness to its dissatisfaction
with itself, since in cannot fulfill its function until completed by its
counterpart in another organism.)
20. Man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is
really fitted.
(Illustration: You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
A true man of science learns from every phenomenon. But Nature is
dumb to the hypocrite; for in her there is nothing false.
Here he added the following footnote: "It is no objection that the hypocrite is himself part of
Nature. He is an 'endothermic' product, divided against himself, with a tendency to break up. He will see his own
qualities everywhere, and thus obtain a radical misconception of phenomena. Most religions of the past have failed
by expecting Nature to conform with their ideals of proper conduct."
But here Crowley was being idealistic rather than objective. If such religions had "failed," he would not have
become so dissatisfied with his times and environment as to set himself up as the new Christ. The dangerous point
is, that it is much easier to assert a limited Will, based on a limited perception of the Universe, than to assert
an ampler will that takes as much of the Universe into account as the instrument of that Will may be conscious of.
In practice, the scientist is always diffident; the fanatic is always loud and positive. Crowley's assertion above
is tantamount to saying that the Will of a hypocrite cannot prevail upon Nature and his or her fellow beings.
This is only correct in the long run — and sometimes in the very, very long run. Humankind, as a whole, cannot
be enslaved by the false Will of a hypocrite; but human beings frequently are. Human life is brief. Christism
is slowly dissolving at last its miasma of sickness and hatred, but it took over a thousand years for brave human
beings, patiently working, to achieve this dissolution with the relentless help of Nature. Jerry Falwell is
extremely wrong, and I am extremely right; but Jerry Falwell made fifty million
dollars last year and I made nothing. So let us put it that the hypocrite is deaf to Nature but not,
unfortunately, dumb to his or her fellows. On the contrary, the more hypocritical they are, the more articulate
they become and the easier they are to understand, for what they have to say is always very simple.
Unfortunately for the unthinking masses, it is not the simplicity of synthesis, such as we find in Liber AL, but
the simplicity of Restriction, such as we find in the Ten Commandments, or in the Creed of Nicea, or in The
Communist Manifesto.
21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man
with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one
with any idea, the means of measurement cease to exist. But his
power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and
capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment.
(Illustration: When a man falls in love, the whole world becomes,
to him, nothing but love boundless and immanent; but his mystical
state is not contagious; his fellow—men are either amused or annoyed.
He can only extend to others the effect which his love has had upon himself
by means of his mental and physical qualities. Thus, Catullus, Dante,
and Swinburne made their love a mighty mover of mankind by virtue of their
power to put their thoughts on the subject in musical and eloquent language.
Again, Cleopatra and other people in authority moulded the fortunes of many other
people by allowing love to influence their political actions. The Magician,
however well he succeeds in making contact with the secret sources of energy in
nature, can only use them to the extent permitted by his intellectual and moral
qualities. Mohammed's intercourse with Gabriel was only effective because
of his statesmanship, soldiership, and the sublimity of his command of Arabic.
Hertz's discovery of the rays which we now use for wireless telegraphy was sterile
until reflected through the minds and wills of the people who could take his truth,
and transmit it to the world of action by means of mechanical and economic instruments.)
22. Every individual is essentially sufficient to himself. But he is unsatisfactory
to himself until he has established himself in his right relation with the Universe.
(Illustration: A microscope, however perfect, is useless in the
hands of savages. A poet, however sublime, must impose himself upon
his generation if he is to enjoy (and even to understand) himself, as
theoretically should be the case.)
23. Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions.
It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.
(Illustration: A golf club is intended to move a special ball in a special way
in special circumstances. A Niblick should rarely be used on the tee, or a
Brassie under the bank of a bunker. But, also, the use of any club demands
skill and experience.)
24. Every man has an indefeasible right to be what he is.
(Illustration: To insist that anyone else shall comply with one's own
standards is to outrage, not only him, but oneself, since both parties
are equally born of necessity.)
Unless, of course, the other person has stated, apparently of his or her
own free will, that he or she wants to conform to your standards, and then proceeds to disprove
this Will through his or her deeds. Then you must tell them to either prove their words by their actions or
go peddle their schizophrenia, true or assumed, elsewhere.
25. Every man must do Magick each time that he acts or even thinks,
since a thought is an internal act whose influence ultimately affects
action, thought it may not do so at the time.
(Illustration: The least gesture causes a change in a man's own body
and in the air around him: it disturbs the balance of the entire
universe and its effects continue eternally throughout all space.
Every thought, however swiftly suppressed, has its effect on the
mind. It stands as one of the causes of every subsequent thought,
and tends to influence every subsequent action. A golfer may lose
a few yards on his drive, a few more with his second and third, he
may lie on the green six bare inches too far from the hole; but the
net result of these trifling mishaps is the difference of a whole
stroke, and so probably between having and losing the hole.)
26. Every man has a right, the right of self-preservation, to fulfill himself to the utmost.
Here he added the following footnote: "Men of 'criminal nature' are simply at issue with their
true Wills. The murderer has the Will-to-live; and his will to murder is a false will at variance with his true
Will, since he risks death at the hands of Society by obeying his criminal impulse."
This is, of course, an over-simplification of the issue, and supposes, first of all, that the "Society"
lives by Thelemic principles, not by Christist, or Moslem, or Zionist, or Brahmin, or Marxist, or whatever.
Mr. Menachem Begin is a model to "Israelis;" he is also a terrorist and murderer to the British, the Arabs and,
incidentally, myself. The laws of any "Society" that does not conform with the
Law of Θελημα will unfailing be
restrictive, inecological and unjust. Galileo broke the law, and so did Crowley; did not the tribunals of their
times condemn both men? United States Law sent Wilhelm Reich and Timothy Leary to prisons for the insane where
both underwent "treatment;" Nixon was elected and Kissinger stated publicly that there is no aphrodisiac like
power, both in that same period of time. One's exercise of one's right to self-preservation in a society of slaves
makes one a criminal at some time or another, and an "enemy of the people." Keep that in mind.
(Illustration: A function imperfectly performed injures, not only
itself, but everything associated with it. If the heart is afraid
to beat for fear of disturbing the liver, the liver is starved for
blood, and avenges itself on the heart by upsetting digestion, which
disorders respiration, on which cardiac welfare depends.)
27. Every man should make Magick the keynote of his life. He should
learn its laws and live by them.
(Illustration: The Banker should discover the real meaning of his
existence, the real motive which led him to choose that profession.
He should understand banking as a necessary factor in the economic
existence of mankind, instead of as merely a business whose objects
are independent of the general welfare. He should learn to distinguish
false values from real, and to act not on accidental fluctuations but on
considerations of essential importance. Such a banker will prove
himself superior to others; because he will not be an individual limited
by transitory things, but a force of Nature, as impersonal, impartial and
eternal as gravitation, as patient and irresistible as the tides.
His system will not be subject to panic, any more than the law of Inverse Squares
is disturbed by Elections. He will not be anxious about his affairs because
they will not be his; and for that reason he will be able to direct them with the
calm, clear-headed confidence of an onlooker, with intelligence unclouded
by self-interest and power unimpaired by passion.)
28. Every man has a right to fulfill his own will without being
afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in
his proper path, it is the fault of others if they interfere with
him.
(Illustration: If a man like Napoleon were actually appointed by
destiny to control Europe, he should not be blamed for exercising
his rights. To oppose him would be an error. Anyone so doing
would have made a mistake as to his own destiny, except in so far
as it might be necessary for him to learn the lessons of defeat. "
The sun moves in space without interference. The order of Nature
provides a orbit for each star. A clash proves that one or the
other has strayed from its course. But as to each man that keeps
his true course, the more firmly he acts, the less likely are others
to get in his way. His example will help them to find their own
paths and pursue them. Every man that becomes a Magician helps
others to do likewise. The more firmly and surely men move, and the
more such action is accepted as the standard of morality, the less
will conflict and confusion hamper humanity.)
Well, here endeth the First Lesson.
That seems to me to cover the ground fairly well; at least, that is what
I have to say when serious analysis is on the agenda.
But there is a restricted and conventional sense in which the word may be used
without straying too far from the above philosophical position. One might say:—
"Magick is the study and use of those forms of energy which are (a) subtler
than the ordinary physical-mechanical types, (b) accessible only to those who are
(in one sense or another) 'Initiates'." I fear that this may sound rather
obscurum per obscurius; but this is one of these cases—
we are likely to encounter many such in the course of our researches—in
which we understand, quite well enough for all practical purposes, what we mean,
but which elude us more and more successfully the more accurately we struggle to
define their import.
We might fare even worse if we tried to clear things up by making lists
of events in history, tradition, or experience and classifying this as
being, and that as not being, true Magick. The borderland cases would
confuse and mislead us.
But—since I have mentioned history—I think it might help, if I went
straight on to the latter part of your question, and gave you a brief
sketch of Magick past, present and future as it is seen from the inside.
What are the principles of the "Masters"? What are They trying to
do? What have They done in the past? What means do They employ?
As it happens, I have by me a sketch written by M. Gerard Aumont of Tunis some twenty years ago,
which covers this subject with reasonable adequacy.
I have been at the pains of translating it from his French, I hope not too much reminiscent
of the old traduttore, traditore. I will revise it, divide it (like Gaul) into
Three Parts and send it along.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
The essay on the Three Schools of Magick is reproduced as Letters 6, 7, and 8.
"Traduttore, traditore" is an Italian pun meaning, 'translator, traitor.' But in this case if Crowley
betrayed anyone it was himself, for the essay, although signed by Mr. Gerard Aumont, was written by Crowley himself.
Aumont was not a pseudonym of Crowley's; he was a pupil for a while in Tunis. We have written extensive notes to
this essay, for reasons that will be obvious to the serious reader when he or she gets to it.
LETTER TWO: The Necessity of Magick for All
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Right glad am I to hear that you have been so thoroughly satisfied with
my explanation of what Magick is, and on what its theories rest. It is
good, too, hearing how much you were interested in the glimpse that you
have had of some of its work in the world; more, that you grasped the
fact that this apparently recondite and irrelevant information has an
immediate bearing on your personal life of today. Still, I was not surprised
that you should add: "But why should I make a special study of,
and devote my time and energy to acquiring proficiency in, the Science
and Art of Magick?
Obviously, this letter was written or re—written already having in mind its publication as
part of a series; it deviates from Crowley's normal colloquial and joking manner.
Ah, well then, perhaps you have not understood my remarks at one of our
earliest interviews as perfectly as you suppose! For the crucial point
of my exposition was that Magick is not a matter extraneous to the main
current of your life, as music, gardening, or collection jade might be.
No, every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance,
carelessness, clumsiness or what not, you come short of perfect artistic
success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration. Luckily
for all of us, most of the acts essential to continued life are involuntary;
the "unconscious" has become so used to doing its "True Will"
that there is no need of interference; when such need arises, we call it
disease, and seek to restore the machine to free spontaneous fulfillment
of its function.
But this is only part of the story. As things are, we have all adventured
into an Universe of immeasurable, of incalculable, possibilities, of situations
never contemplated by the trend of Evolution. Man is a marine
monster; when he decided that it would be better for him somehow to live
on land, he had to grow lungs instead of gills. When we want to travel
over soft snow, we have to invent ski; when we wish to exchange thoughts,
we must arrange a conventional code of sounds, of knots in string, of
carved or written characters—in a word—embark upon the boundless ocean
of hieroglyphics or symbols of one sort or another. (Presently I shall
have to explain the supreme importance of such systems; in fact, the
Universe itself is not, and cannot be, anything but an arrangement of
symbolic characters!)
Here we are, then, caught in a net of circumstances; if we are to do
anything at all beyond automatic vegetative living, we must consciously
apply ourselves to Magick, "the Science and Art" (let me remind you!) "of
causing change to occur in conformity with the Will." Observe that the
least slackness or error means that things happen which do not thus conform;
when this is so despite our efforts, we are (temporarily) baffled;
when it is our own ignorance of what we ought to will, or lack of skill
in adapting our means to the right end, then we set up a conflict in our
own Nature: our act is suicidal. Such interior struggle is at the base
of nearly all neuroses, as Freud recently "discovered"—as if this had
not been taught, and taught without his massed errors, by the great teachers of
the past! The Taoist doctrine, in particular, is most precise and most emphatic
on this point; indeed, it may seem to some of us to overshoot the mark; for nothing
is permissible in that scheme but frictionless adjustment and adaptation to
circumstance. "Benevolence and righteousness" are actually deprecated!
That any such ideas should ever have existed (says Lao-tse) is merely evidence of the
universal disorder.
Taoist sectaries appear to assume that Perfection consists in the absence
of any disturbance of the Stream of Nescience; and this is very much like
the Buddhist idea of Nibbana.
We who accept the Law of Θελημα, even should
we concur in this doctrine
theoretically, cannot admit that in practice the plan would work out; our
aim is that our Nothing, ideally perfect as it is in itself, should enjoy
itself through realizing itself in the fulfillment of all possibilities.
All such phenomena or "point-events" are equally "illusion"; Nothing is
always Nothing; but the projection of Nothing on this screen of the phenomenal
does not only explain, but constitutes, the Universe. It is the
only system which reconciles all the contradictions inherent in Thought,
and in Experience; for in it "Reality" is "Illusion", "Free-will"
is "Destiny", the "Self" is the "Not-Self"; and so for
every puzzle of Philosophy.
Not too bad an analogy is an endless piece of string. Like a driving
band, you cannot tie a knot in it; all the complexities you can contrive are
"Tom Fool" knots, and unravel at the proper touch. Always either
Naught or Two! But every new re-arrangement throws further light on the
possible tangles, that is, on the Nature of the String itself. It is
always "Nothing" when you pull it out; but becomes "Everything" as you
play about with it, since there is no limit to the combinations that
you can form from it, save only in your imagination (where the whole thing
belongs!) and that grows mightily with Experience. It is accordingly well
worth while to fulfill oneself in every conceivable manner.
The above proposition, which sounded so simple to him as he wrote it, will demand the deepest
meditation and years of verification from the average student.
It is then (you will say) impossible to "do wrong", since all phenomena
are equally "Illusion" and the answer is always "Nothing." In theory one
can hardly deny this proposition; but in practice—how shall I put it?
"The state of Illusion which for convenience I call my present consciousness
is such that the course of action A is more natural to me that the course of action B?"
Or: A is a shorter cut to Nothing; A is less likely to create internal conflict.
Will that serve?
Offer a dog a juicy bone, and a bundle of hay; he will naturally take
the bone, whereas a horse would choose the hay. So, while you happen to
imagine yourself to be a Fair Lady seeking the Hidden Wisdom, you come to
me; if you thought you were a Nigger Minstrel, you would play the banjo,
and sing songs calculated to attract current coin of the Realm from a
discerning Public! ...
The word "nigger " did not have at the time and in England the heavy emotional connotations
it was later to acquire in the U.S.A. Nor should the reader think that Crowley had color prejudice; remember
that several of his male lovers were black, and that he wrote a poem (under the pseudonym of 'Hilda Norfolk,'
to emphasize both his passivity in the affair and the whiteness of his own skin — "Norfolk" — Nordic) of sexual
rapture dedicated to at least one of them. Furthermore, "nigger minstrels" were all the rage of musical halls
at the time, white performers blackening themselves with burnt cork to sing and dance in disguise, in the manner
made famous in the movies by Al Jolson.
... The two actions are ultimately identical—see
AL I, 22—and your perception of that
fact would make you an Initiate of very high standing; but in the work-a-day world,
you are "really" the Fair Lady, and leave the minstrel to grow infirm and
old and hire an orphan boy to carry his banjo!
Now then, what bothers me it this: Have I or have I not explained this
matter of "Magick"—"Why should I (who have only just heard of it, at
least as a serious subject of study) acquire a knowledge of its principles,
and of the powers conferred by its mastery?" Must I bribe you with promises
of health, wealth, power over others, knowledge, thaumaturgical skill, success in
every worldly ambition—as I could quite honestly do? I hope there is no such
need—and yet, shall I confess it?—it was only because all the good things
of life were suddenly seen of me to be worthless, that I took the first steps towards
the attainment of that Wisdom which, while enjoying to the full the "Feast of Life,"
guarantees me against surfeit, poison or interruption by the knowledge that it is all a Dream,
and gives me the Power to turn that dream at will into any form that happens to
appeal to my Inclination.
I would rather be awake
Let me sum up, very succinctly; as usual, my enthusiasm has lured me into
embroidering my sage discourse with Poets' Imagery!
Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing
it, and you had better do it well than badly. You are on the links,
whether you like it or not; why go on topping your drive, and slicing
your brassie, and fluffing your niblick, and pulling your iron, and socketing your mashie
and not being up with your putt—that's 6, and you are not allowed to pick up.
It's a far cry to the Nineteenth, and the sky threatens storm before the imminent night.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER THREE: Hieroglypics: Life and Language Necessarily Symbolic
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Very natural, the irritation in your last! You write:—
"But why? Why all this elaborate symbolism? Why not say straight out
what you mean? Surely the subject is difficult enough in any case—must
you put on a mask to make it clear? I know you well enough by now to be
sure that you will not fob me off with any Holy-Willie nonsense about the
ineffable, about human language being inadequate to reveal such Mysteries,
about the necessity of constructing a new language to explain a new
system of thought; of course I know that this had to be done in the case
of chemistry, of higher mathematics, indeed of almost all technical subjects;
but I feel that you have some other, deeper explanation in reserve.
"After all, most of what I am seeking to learn from you has been familiar
to many of the great minds of humanity for many centuries. Indeed, the
Qabalah is a special language, and that is old enough; there is not much
new material to fit into that structure. But why did they, in the first
place, resort to this symbolic jargon?"
You put it very well ...
Too well, indeed; he rewrote it for the purposes of his discourse.
This occasionally will happen with his longer quotations from her and other pupil's letters in this book.
Pupils are seldom able to write so cogently on such matters, and when they do write long letters like this
they are to be discouraged; for asking long questions is usually merely an excuse for doing short work. If any.
...; and when I think it over, I feel far from sure
that the explanation which I am about to inflict upon you will satisfy
you, or even whether it will hold water! In the last resort, I shall
have to maintain that we are justified by experience, by the empirical
success in communicating thought which has attended, and continues to
attend, our endeavors.
But to give a complete answer, I shall have to go back to the beginning,
and restate the original problem; and I beg that you will not suppose
that I am evading the question, or adopting the Irish method of answering it by another,
though I know it may sound as if I were.
Let me set out by restating our original problem; what we want is Truth;
we want an even closer approach to Reality; and we want to discover and
discuss the proper means of achieving this object.
Very good; let us start by the simplest of all possible enquiries—and
the most difficult—"What is anything?" "What do
we know?" and other questions that spring naturally from these.
I see a tree.
I hear it—rustling or creaking in the wind.
I touch it—hard.
I smell it—acrid.
I taste it—bitter.
The last two sensations depend on the type of tree, of course.
Now all the information given by these five senses has to be put together,
although no two agree in any sort of way. The logic by which we build up
our complex idea of a tree has more holes than a sponge ...
The following paragraphs should be, and have been, most attentively read by scientists,
for Crowley is analysing the very process of observation by which scientific research is possible; and he
is analysing it in order to show the process through which our minds perceive anything outside themselves — or
recreate from memory or imagination. What he is describing is one of the first discoveries of Pratyahara.
It is deeply disturbing at first for the mind to perceive the flimsiness, the irreality one might say,
of the process by which it "accesses reality." But how else can you study the instrument of consciousness?
And unless you know the instrument as deeply as you can, how can you use it efficiently?
But this is to jump far ahead: we must first analyze the single, simple impression.
"I see a tree." This phenomenon is what is called a "point-event."
It is the coming together of the two, the seer and the seen. It is single and simple; yet
we cannot conceive of either of them as anything but complex. And the Point-Event tells
us nothing whatever about either; both, as Herbert Spencer and God knows how many others have
shown, unknowable; it stands by itself, alone and aloof. It has happened;
it is undeniably Reality. Yet we cannot confirm it; for it can never
happen again precisely the same. What is even more bewildering is that
since it takes time for the eye to convey an impression to the consciousness (it
may alter in 1,000 ways in the process!) all that really exists is a memory of the
Point-Event. not the Point-Event itself. What then is this Reality of
which we are so sure? Obviously, it has not got a name, since it never happened
before, or can happen again! To discuss it at all we must invent a name,
and this name (like all names) cannot possibly be anything more than a symbol.
Even so, as so often pointed out, all we do is to "record the behaviour
of our instruments." Nor are we much better off when we've done it; for
our symbol, referring as it does to a phenomenon unique in itself, and
not to be apprehended by another, can mean nothing to one's neighbors.
What happens, of course, is that similar, though not identical, Point-Events
happen to many of us, and so we are able to construct a symbolic
language. My memory of the mysterious Reality resembles yours sufficiently
to induce us to agree that both belong to the same class.
But let me furthermore ask you to reflect on the formation of language
itself. Except in the case of onomatopoeic words ...
Words that describe things by imitating the sound of such things, like 'meow' for a
cat's meow or 'bang' for an explosion. We apologize for introducing such explanations from time to time,
but the cultured reader is a rarity these days, and should ponder the wonderful effects of modern 'socialistic'
or 'progressive' education on the mind of the average person. To reach for a dictionary may affect such a
person's attention span more than he or she can stand without missing the point of what is being read.
This long apology is likely to have the same effect, but it is being made only once.
... and a few others,
there is no logical connection between a thing and the sound of our name
for it. "Bow-wow" is a more rational name than "dog",
which is a mere convention agreed on by the English, while other nations prefer
chien, hund, cane, kalb, kutta and so on.
All symbols, you see, my dear child, and it's no good your kicking!
But it doesn't stop there. When we try to convey thought by writing, we
are bound to sit down solidly, and construct a holy Qabalah out of nothing.
Why would a curve open to the right, sound like the ocean, open at the
top, like you? And all these arbitrary symbolic letters are combined by
just as symbolic and arbitrary devices to take on conventional meanings,
these words again combined into phrases by no less high-handed a procedure.
And then folk wonder how it is that there should be error and misunderstanding
in the transmission of thought from one person to another! Rather regard
it as a miraculous intervention of Providence when even one of even the simplest
ideas "gets across." Now then, this being so, it is evidently
good sense to construct one's own alphabet, with one's own very precise definitions,
in order to handle an abstruse and technical subject like Magick. The
"ordinary" words such as God, self, soul, spirit and the rest have
been used so many thousand times in so many thousand ways, usually by writers
who knew not, or cared not for the necessity of definition that to use them
to-day in any scientific essay is almost ludicrous.
That is all, just now, sister; no more of your cavilling, please; sit
down quietly with your 777, and get it by heart!
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER FOUR: The Qabalah: The Best Training for Memory
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Now you must learn Qabalah. Learn this Alphabet of Magick. You must
take it on trust, as a child does his own alphabet. No one has ever
found out why the order of the letters is what it is. Probably there
isn't any answer.
The answer is simply that from the beginning the letters were associated with numbers, and
an entire system of intertwined symbolic logic came out of it. Any other system, provided it were coherent in
itself, would serve — cf. Russell & Whitehead on this in Principia Mathematica. The advantage of the Qabalah
is that is has been in use for so long that an entire system of archetypes has become associated with it. Those
archetypes have their counterparts in other cultures, as it was only to be expected: the general principles of
medicine can be used to cure any variant of the human species; and no matter how much a human being may differ
from another - some almost looking like monkeys, and some almost behaving like monkeys even if they do not look
simian - they all belong to the same species. The Qabalah was not, of course, invented by the Jews themselves.
They had it partly from the Babylonians, partly from the Assyrians, partly from the Egyptians. But the practical
Qabalah that Crowley is specifically talking about was developed in the Middle Ages of Europe by a great Jewish
genius, Maimonides, in an effort to prove to the Christists that they and the Israelites had a common heritage of
spiritual insights with the so-called barbaric tribes of Europe and the wisdom of Islam and the Far East.
Maimonides had help, of course, in doing this, but deserves all the credit for giving momentum to this effort
to counteract the horror and the hatred hidden behind Christism's false message of "love." Like all things that
have value for humankind beyond the life of a generation, the Qabalah has changed and grown with the centuries.
The so-called "Qabalah of Aleister Crowley" is not, of course, Aleister Crowley's any more than modern physics
belongs to Einstein. Without Newton's work, and the work of all those that went before him, where would Einstein be?
And where would we be without Einstein and Aleister Crowley?
The following paragraph was cut out by Mr. Regardie from his "edition," for reasons connected
with pure greed. The paragraph calls attention to Crowley's efforts at deciphering the mysteries of the
Yi Jing, and Helen Parsons-Smith had just put out her own "edition" of this Book. In view of the fact that
Mr. Regardie claims that he had Crowley's best interests at heart when he started pirating Crowley's work,
and in view of the fact that Mrs. Parsons-Smith, although not authorized to publish O.T.O. material, was at
least an O.T.O. member (something that Mr. Regardie has never been and never will be), it is interesting that
he should try to hinder, rather than to help, her effort. But the Magus works in subtle ways His wonders to
perform, and greed and pettiness in thieves may eventually contribute to the benefit of true followers.
See Equinox V, No. 3, published by the O.T.O., advertised at the end of this volume.
If you only knew what I am grappling with in the Yi King! The order of
the sixty-four hexagrams. I am convinced that it is extremely significant,
that it implies a sublime system of philosophy. I've got far enough
to be absolutely sure that there is a necessary rhythm; and it's killing
me by millimetres, finding out why each pair succeeds the last. Forgive
these tears!
But our Magical Alphabet is primarily not letters, but figures, not sounds
but mathematical ideas. Sir Humphrey Davy, coming out of his famous
illumination (with some help from Nitrous Oxide he got in) exclaimed:
The Universe is composed solely of ideas. We, analyzing this a little,
say: The Universe is a mathematical expression.
Of course, the Universe is nothing necessarily of the sort. It would be better to express
both insights in this way: "A certain region of the human mind can apprehend the Universe solely as ideas," and "The
constitution of the human mind tends to the investigation of the Universe through mathematical processes."
This, by the way, is in accordance with Crowley's own advice. We are in extreme need of communication with other
intelligent forms of life at this stage; there is no other way to enrich our experiences. We might start by trying
the cetaceans, although they are so close to us genetically. They are extremely intelligent, yet have never
attempted to develop a technology, have adapted to their environment rather than tried to change it; have been
persistently harmed by us, and yet persist in remaining friendly towards bothersome bipeds. An explanation of
their motivations might enlarge our conception of the Universe in a way to transcend all philosophies and scientific
speculations so far.
Sir James Jeans might have said this, only his banker advised him to cash
in on God ...
Sir James Jeans was a physicist and a teacher, a contemporary of Eddington, and wrote some
very clear books explaining physics to the lay person. Eddington's literary work was, however, far superior
in content.
... The simplest form of this expression is 0 = 2, elsewhere
expounded at great length ...
See letter 5. But it is also in practically every other letter of this book, and is the basis
of Crowley's ontology.
... This 2 might itself be expressed in an
indefinitely great number of ways. Every prime number, including some
not in the series of "natural numbers", is an individual. The
other numbers with perhaps a few exceptions (for instance 418) are composed of their primes.
Each of these ideas may be explained, investigated, understood, by means
very various. Firstly, the Hebrew, Greek and Arabic numbers are also
letters. Then, each of these letters is further described by one of the
(arbitrarily composed) "elements of Nature; the Four (or Five)
Elements, the Seven (or Ten) Planets, and the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.
As he says himself, the composition of those ideas is arbitrary, although very likely it was
the product of "astral investigation" on the part of Maimonides and his collaborators. Among other things, we
may consider "Seven Elements," following the Hindu-Tibetan esoteric tradition, or, as he says himself, Ten Planets
(including the Moon) rather than just seven. The point is that attempts to introduce these thoughts on the Tree
seem to be successful. In a way, the Qabalistic Tree of Life proves itself by such additions, which complicate but
further harmonize the whole. There is in this a parallel with the Table of Elements; but it has, so far, proved
extremely useful to mystics and magicians. One should not, however, exaggerate this usefulness to the point of
falling into the delusion that the Qabalah is "divinely ordained." I remember a conversation in Brasil with
Oskar Schlag (who had come to feel me out for either Shin Beth or the Vatican or the C.I.A. or more likely
all three at once) in which he protested against Crowley's inversion of the Emperor and the Star on the Tree,
implying it was "unorthodox." I suggested to him that the Masters manipulate the Tree for their own purposes
from time to time, especially when the Aeons succeed each other, and he became very indignant about this.
Apparently he was under the delusion that there is still one more Commandment from Moses or whoever:
"Thou shalt not diddle with the Tree." Dogmatism for its own sake is always the mark of the pendant, the
superficial thinker, the hypocrite or the theologian. Robert Frost's famous wall is often built in one's mind.
All these are arranged in a geometrical design composed of ten "Sephiroth"
(numbers) and twenty-two "paths" joining them; this is called the Tree of Life...
The reference, of course, is to Genesis; and it is interesting to see Adam, after so many
supposed centuries, still trying to wrestle Jehovah's secrets from Heaven's guard, following the advice of the
Serpent. Or are they going to blame it on Eve again? At any rate, it is no wonder the Christist inquisitors
burned so many Qabalist Jews alive. One imagines these martyrs were often denounced by their own people; for
if not heretics, they were certainly "satanists." One wonders if any of them raised the objection that the
law was made for man, and not man for the law, and what good it did them if they did.
Every idea soever can be, and should be, attributed to one or more of
these primary symbols; thus green, in different shades, is a quality or
function of Venus, the Earth, the Sea, Libra, and others. So also abstract
ideas; dishonesty means "an afflicted Mercury," ...
One imagines that Mercury was in dire need of heavy doses of Valium in Mr. Regardie's horoscope!
... generosity a good,
though not always strong, Jupiter; and so on.
The Tree of Life has got to be learnt by heart; you must know it backwards,
forwards, sideways, and upside down; it must become the automatic
background of all your thinking. You must keep on hanging everything
that comes your way upon its proper bough.
At first, of course, all this is dreadfully confusing; but persist, and
a time will come when all the odd bits fit into the jig-saw, and you
behold—with what adoring wonder!—the marvellous beauty and symmetry
of the Qabalistic system.
And then—what a weapon you will have forged!
What power to analyze, to order, to manipulate your thinking!
The following six Crowley paragraphs were excised by Mr. Regardie, only he - and perhaps
Jehovah - knows why. Too colloquial about "sacred" things?
And please remember when people compliment you on your memory or the clarity
of your thought, to give credit to the Qabalah!
That's fine, I seem to hear you purr; that looks a lovely machine. The
Design is just elegant; that scarf-pin of yours is perfectly sweet.
There's only one point: how to make the damn thing work?
Ah yes, like the one in the Apocalypse, the sting is in your tail.
Honest, you needn't worry; it works on ball-bearings, and there's always
those "Thirteen Fountains of Magnificent Oil flowing down the Beard of
Macroprosopus" in case it creaks a little at first. But seriously,
all the mathematics you need is simple Addition and Multiplication.
"Yeah!" you rudely reply. "That's what you think; but you haven't
got very far in the Qabalah!"
Too true, sister.
The Book of the Law itself insists upon the fact that it
contains a Qabalah which was beyond me at the time of its dictation, is beyond me
now, and always will be beyond me in this incarnation. Let me direct
your spiritual attention to AL I, 54; I, 56; II, 54-55; III, 47.
Now there was enough comprehensible at the time to assure me that the
Author of the Book knew at least as much Qabalah as I did: I discovered
subsequently more than enough to make it certain without error that he
knew a very great deal more, and that of an altogether higher order, than
I knew; finally, such glimmerings of light as time and desperate study
have thrown on many other obscure passages, to leave no doubt whatever
in my mind that he is indeed the supreme Qabalist of all time . . . .
But please do not infer from this that Aiwass is "God," and that the Qabalah - specially
the Thelemic - is a direct gift from "God" to Adam (oh, not to Eve, no!), or you will follow Messrs. Schlag
and Begin into the garbage heap of idolatry. Mr. Regardie seems so far to have avoided at least this mistake, which
may give rise to a maxim. Better a thief than a fanatic...? Either way, the following eight paragraphs were again
excised by Mr. Regardie, perhaps because they teach the reader how to work out his or her own Qabalah, and so not
to depend on "Qabalists" of Mr. Regardie's level for "guidance." They also show too well where, how, and under
whose counsel he learned the little Qabalah he knew.
"I asked you how to work it."
Don't be so peevish, querulous, and impatient; your zeal is laudable,
but it's wasting your own time to hurry me.
Well, when you've got this Alphabet of Numbers (in its proper shape)
absolutely by heart, with as many sets of attributions as you can commit
to memory without getting confused, you may try a few easy exercises,
beginning with the past.
("How many sets of attributions?"—Well, certainly, the Hebrew and
Greek Alphabets with the names and numbers of each letter, and its mean-
ing: a couple of lists of God-names, with a clear idea of the character,
qualities, functions, and importance of each; the "King-scale" of colour,
all the Tarot attributions, of course; then animals, plants, drugs, per-
fumes, a list or two of archangels, angels, intelligences and spirits—that
ought to be enough for a start.)
Now you are armed! Ask yourself: why is the influence of Tiphareth
transmitted to Yesod by the Path of Samekh, a fence, 60, Sagittarius,
the Archer, Art, blue—and so on; but to Hod by the Path of Ayin, an
eye, 70, Capricornus, the Goat, the Devil, Indigo, etc.?
Either Crowley or a secretary apparently slipped here, for Samkeh is a "prop," not a "fence."
True, there are certain important analogies between the two letters; however, those are beyond discussion in this
public work.
Thirteen is the number of Achad , Unity, and Ahebah, Love;
then what word should arise when you expand it by the Creative Dyad, and get 26; what
when you multiply it by 4, and get 52? Then, suppose the Pentagram gets
busy, 13 x 5 = 65, what then?
Now don't you dare to come round crawling to me for the answers; work
it out yourself what sort of words they ought to be, and then check
your result by looking up those numbers in the Sepher Sephiroth:
Equinox Vol. I, No. 8, Supplement.
When you are a real adept at all these well-known calculations "prepare
to enter the Immeasurable Region" and dig out the Unknown.
You must construct your own Qabalah!
He does not mean that you must construct a new Tree of Life: he means that you must build up
your own dictionary of words and numbers that make the Tree of Life especially significant to you, and the Qabalistic
correspondences especially useful to you. The following paragraphs elucidate this point.
Nobody can do it for you. What is your own true Number? You must find
it and prove it to be correct. In the course of a few years, you should
have built yourself a Palace of Ineffable Glory, a Garden of Indescribable
Delight. ...
All these were terms applied to Qabalistic or philosophical tracts and to collections of
poetry by the Arabs and the Hebrews in the Middle Ages.
... Nor time
nor Fate can tame those tranquil towers, those
Minarets of Music, or fade one blossom in those avenues of Perfume!
Humph! Nasty of me: but it has just stuck me that it might be just as
well if you made a Sepher Sephiroth of your own! What a positively
beastly thing to suggest! However, I do suggest it.
After all, it's simple enough. Every word you come across, add it up,
stick it down against that number in a book kept for the purpose. That
may seem tedious and silly; why should you do all over again the work
that I have already done for you? Reason: simple. Doing it will teach
you Qabalah as nothing else could. Besides, you won't be all cluttered
up with words that mean nothing to you; and if it should happen that you
want a word to explain some particular number, you can look it up in my
Sepher Sephiroth.
By this method, too, you may strike a rich vein of words of your own
that I have altogether missed.
No doubt, a Really Great Teacher would have said: "Beware! Use my
Dictionary, and mine alone! All others are spurious!" But then I'm not
a R.G.T. of that kind.
Indubitably one of the reasons why he died poor, which will not be the case with Mr. Regardie.
For a start, of course, you should put down the words that are bound to
come in your way in any case: numbers like 11, 13, 31, 37, and their
multiples; the names of God and the principal angels; the planetary
and geomantic names; and your own private and particular name with its
branches. After that, let your work on the Astral Plane guide you.
When investigating the name and other words communicated to you by such
beings as you meet there, or invoke, many more will come up in their
proper connections. Very soon you will have quite a nice little Sepher
Sephiroth of your very own. Remember to aim, above all things, at
coherence.
It is excellent practice, but the way, to do some mental arithmetic on
your walks; acquire the habit of adding up any names that you have come
across in your morning's reading. Nietzsche has well observed that the
best thoughts come by walking; and it has happened to me, more than
once or twice, that really important correspondences have come, as by
a flashlight, when I was padding the old hoof.
You will have noticed that in this curt exposition I have confined myself
to Gematria, the direct relation of number and word, omitting any reference
to Notariqon, the accursed art of making words out of initials,
like (in profane life) Wren and Gestapo and their horrid brood, or to
Temurah, the art of altering the position of the letters in a word,
a sort of cipher; for these are almost always frivolous. To base any
serious calculations on them would be absurd.
Yet, these are the favorite entertainment of "orthodox" Jewish Qabalists.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
P.S. You should study the Equinox Vol. I, No. 5, "The Temple of Solomon
the King" for a more elaborate exposition of the Qabalah.
LETTER FIVE: The Universe: The 0 = 2 Equation
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yes, I admit everything! It is all my fault. Looking over my past writings,
I do see that my only one-pointed attempt to set forth a sound ontology was my early
fumbling letter brochure. Since then, I seem
to have kept assuming that everybody knew all about it; referring to it, quoting it, but never
sitting down seriously to demonstrate the thesis, or even to state it in set terms.
Chapter 0 of Magick in Theory and Practice skates gently over it; the "Naples
Arrangement" in The Book of Thoth dodges it with really diabolical ingenuity.
I ask myself why. It is exceedingly strange, because every time I think of the Equation,
I am thrilled with a keen glow of satisfaction that this sempiternal Riddle of the Sphinx
should have been answered at last.
So then let me now give myself the delight, and you the comfort, of stating the
problem from its beginning, and proving the soundness of the solution—of
showing that the contradiction of this Equation is unthinkable. — —
Are you ready? Forward! Paddle!
Readers seriously interested in Thelemic philosophy — by which I mean those who want to live
by it —— should pay close attention to this demonstration. The entire concept of Θελημα springs
from it.
The following is a sort of extended commentary on AL I, 28-30, 45-46; II, 66, III 19-20.
1. We are aware.
2. We cannot doubt the existence (whether "real" or "illusory"
makes no difference) of something, because doubt itself is a form of awareness.
3. We lump together all that of which we are aware under the convenient
name of "Existence", or "The Universe". Cosmos is
not so good for this purpose; that word implies "order", which in the
present stage of our argument, is a mere assumption.
4. We also tend to think of the Universe as containing things of which
we are not aware; but this is altogether unjustifiable, although it is
difficult to think at all without making some such assumption. For
instance, one may come upon a new branch of knowledge—say, histology
or Hammurabi or the language of the Iroquois or the poems of the Hermaphrodite
of Panormita. It seems to be there all ready waiting for us;
we simply cannot believe that we are making it all up as we go along.
For all that, it is sheer sophistry; we may merely be unfolding the
contents of our own minds. Then again, does a thing cease to exist if we
forget it? The answer is that one cannot be sure.
The reader is reminded that many states of insanity - among which we definitely must
include religious fanaticism - revolve precisely around such points.
Personally, I feel convinced of the existence of an Universe outside my
own immediate awareness; but it is true, even so, that it does not exist
for me unless and until it takes its place as part of my consciousness.
This is added argument for trying to expand one's consciousness, and for not being
too self-satisfied. I may not be aware that a supersonic airplane is coming towards me from the back; it
may not exist for me until the moment that it reduces me to a shower of disrupted colloid bits - but it then
proves its existence in a very thorough manner, and I will be even more idiotic than the average fool if I call
it "evil" or "satanic" as I die, or call it "The Will of God," which is simply another way of expressing my idiocy
that kept me in the path of the airplane in the first place.
5. All this paragraph 4 is in the nature of a digression, for what you
may think of it does not at all touch the argument of this letter. But
it had to be put in, just to prevent your mind from raising irrelevant
objections. Let me continue, then, from 3.
6. Something is. (You must read the "Soldier and The Hunchback" in
Equinox I 1. This something appears
incalculably vast and complex. How did it come to be?
This, briefly, is the "Riddle of the Universe," which has been always the
first preoccupation of all serious philosophers since men began to think
at all.
7. The orthodox idiot answer, usually wrapped up in obscure terms in the
hope of concealing from the enquirer the fact that it is not an answer
at all, but an evasion, is: God created it.
Then, obviously, who created God? Sometimes we have a Demiurge, a creative
God behind whom is an eternal formless Greatness—anything to confuse
the issue!
Sometimes the Universe is supported by an elephant; he, in turn, stands
on a tortoise . . . by that time it is hoped that the enquirer is too
tired and muddled to ask what holds up the tortoise.
Sometimes, a great Father and Mother crystallize out of some huge cloudy
confusion of "Elements"and so on. But nobody answers the question;
at least, none of these God-inventing mules, with their incurably commonplace minds.
8. Serious philosophy has always begun by discarding all these puerilities.
It has of necessity been divided into these schools: the Nihilist, the Monist, and the Dualist.
9. The last of these is, on the surface, the most plausible; for almost
the first thing that we notice on inspecting the Universe is what the
Hindu schools call "the Pairs of Opposites."
This too, is very convenient, because it lends itself so readily to orthodox
theology; so we have Ormuzd and Ahriman, the Devas and the Asuras, Osiris and
Set, et cetera and da capo, personifications of "Good" and
"Evil." The foes may be fairly matched; but more often the tale tells
of a revolt in heaven. In this case, "Evil" is temporary; soon, especially
with the financial help of the devout, the "devil" will be "cast into the
Bottomless Pit" and "the Saints will reign with Christ in glory for ever and
ever, Amen!" Often a "redeemer," a "dying God," is needed
to secure victory to Omnipotence; and this is usually what little vulgar boys might call
a "touching story!"
10. The Monist (or Advaitist) school, is at once subtler and more refined;
it seems to approach the ultimate reality (as opposed to the superficial
examination of the Dualists) more closely.
It seems to me that this doctrine is based upon a sorites of
doubtful validity. ...
"Sorites" is a word from formal logic: it means a chain of arguments in which each
depends on the other to reach a conclusion.
... To tell you the hideously shameful truth, I hate this doctrine so rabidly that I can
hardly trust myself to present it fairly! But I will try. Meanwhile, you
can study it in the Upanishads, in the Bhagavad-Gita, in Ernst Haeckel's
The Riddle of the Universe, and dozens of other classics. The dogma appears
to excite its dupes to dithyrambs. I have to admit the "poetry" of the
idea; but there is something in me which vehemently rejects it with excruciating and
vindictive violence. Possibly, this is because part of our own system runs parallel
with the first equations of theirs.
11. The Monists perceive quite clearly and correctly that it is absurd
to answer the question "How came these Many things (of which we are aware)
to be?" by saying that they came from Many; and "Many" in this connection
includes Two. The Universe must therefore be a single phenomenon: make it eternal
and all the rest of it— i.e. remove all limit of any
kind—and the Universe explains itself. How then can Opposites exist,
as we observe them to do? Is it not the very essence of our original
Sorites that the Many must be reducible to the One? They see how awkward
this is; so the "devil" of the Dualist is emulsified and evaporated
into "illusion;" what they call "Maya" or some equivalent term.
"Reality" for them consists solely of Brahman, the supreme Being "without
quantity or quality." They are compelled to deny him all attributes,
even that of Existence; for to do so would instantly limit them, and so
hurl them headlong back in to Dualism. All that of which we are aware
must obviously possess limits, or it could have no intelligible meaning
for us; if we want "pork," we must specify its qualities and quantities;
at the very least, we must be able to distinguish it from "that-which-is-not-pork."
But—one moment, please!
12. There is in Advaitism a most fascinating danger; that is that, up
to a certain point, "Religious Experience" tends to support this theory.
A word on this. Vulgar minds, such as are happy with a personal God,
Vishnu, Jesus, Melcarth, Mithras, or another, often excite themselves—call it
"Energized Enthusiasm" if you want to be sarcastic!—to the
point of experiencing actual Visions of the objects of their devotion.
But these people have not so much as asked themselves the original question of
"How come?" which is our present subject. Sweep them into the discard!
13. Beyond Vishvarupadarshana, the vision of the Form of Vishnu, beyond
that yet loftier vision which corresponds in Hindu classification to our
"Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel", is that called
Atmadarshana, the vision (or apprehension, a much better word) of the
Universe as a single phenomenon, outside all limitations, whether of
time, space, causality, or what not.
Very good, then! Here we are with direct realization of the Advaitist
theory of the Universe. Everything fits perfectly. Also, when I say
"realization," I want you to understand that I mean what I say in a
sense so intense and so absolute that it is impossible to convey my
meaning to anyone who has not undergone that experience. (I have discussed this and the following points
very fully in Book Four Part I.)
See Yoga and Magick, pp. 47-66.
How do we judge the "reality" of an ordinary impression upon consciousness?
Chiefly by its intensity, by its persistence, by the fact that nobody can argue us out of
our belief in it. As people said of Berkeley's 'Idealism'—"his arguments
are irrefutable but they fail to carry conviction." No sceptical, no idealist
queries can persuade us that a kick in the pants is not 'real' in any reasonable sense of
the word. Moreover memory reassures us. However vivid a dream may be at the time,
however it may persist throughout the years (though it is rare for any dream, unless frequently
repeated, or linked to waking impressions by some happy conjunction of circumstances, to
remain long in the mind with any clear-cut vision) it is hardly ever mistaken for an event of
actual life. Good: then, as waking life is to dream, so—yes, more so!—is
Religious Experience as above described to that life common to all of us. It is not
merely easy, it is natural, not merely natural, but inevitable, for anyone who has experienced
"Samadhi" (this word conveniently groups the higher types of vision. "Vision" is a dreadfully
bad word for it; 'trance' is better, but idiots always mix it up with hypnotism.) to regard normal life
as "illusion" by comparison with this state in which all problems
are resolved, all doubts driven out, all limitations abolished.
But even beyond Atmadarshana comes the experience called Shivadarshana, (possibly almost
identical with the Buddhist Neroda - Samapati) ...
It is identical. The supposed differences are merely the result of cultural
or religious conditioning.
... in which this Atman (or Brahman), this limit—destroying Universe, is itself
abolished and annihilated.
(And, with this experience, smash goes the whole of the Advaitist theory!)
It is a commonplace to say that no words can describe this final destruction.
Such is the fact; and there is nothing one can do about it but
put it down boldly as I have done above. It does not matter to our
present purpose; all that we need to know is that the strongest prop of
the Monist structure has broken off short.
Moreover, is it really adequate to postulate an origin of the Universe,
as they inevitably do? Merely to deny that there ever was a beginning
by saying that this "One" is eternal fails to satisfy me.
What is very much worse, I cannot see that to call Evil "illusion" helps
us at all. When the Christian Scientist hears that his wife has been
savagely mauled by her Peke, he has to smile, and say that "there is a
claim of error." Not good enough.
14. It has taken a long while to clear the ground. That I did not
expect; the above propositions are so familiar to me, they run so
cleanly through my mind, that, until I came to set them down in order,
I had no idea what a long and difficult business it all was.
Still, it's a long lane, etc. We have seen that "Two" (or "Many") are
unsatisfactory as origin, if only because they can always be reduced to "One";
and "One" itself is no better, because, among other things, it finds itself forced
to deny the very premises on which it was founded.
Shall we be any better off if we assume that "Ex nihilo nihil fit" is
a falsehood, that the origin of All Things is Nothing? Let us see!
15. Shall we first glance at the mathematical aspect of Nothing?
(Including its identical equation in Logic.) This I worked out so long
ago as 1902 e.v. in Berashith, which you
will find reprinted in The Sword of Song,
and in my Collected Works, Vol. I.
The argument may be summarized as follows.
When, in the ordinary way of business, we write 0, we should really
write 0n.
For 0 implies that the subject is not extended in any dimension under discussion.
Thus a line may be two feet in length, but in breadth and depth the coefficient is
Zero. We could describe it as 2f × 0b × 0d, or
n2f + 0b + 0d.
/*I'm sure that's x not + as in the Motta commentary. I'll have to check this*/
What I proposed in considering "What do we mean by Nothing?" was to
consider every possible quality of any object as a dimension.
For instance, one might describe this page as being nf + n'b + n''d +
0 redness + 0 amiability + 0 velocity + 0 potential and so on,
until you had noted and measured all the qualities it possesses, and excluded all
that it does not. For convenience, we may write this expression as
Xf+b+d+r+a+v+p—using the initials of the qualities which we call
dimensions.
Just one further explanation in pure mathematics. To interpret X1,
X1+1 or X2, and so on, we assume the reference to be to spatial
dimensions. Thus suppose X1 to be a line a foot long, X2
will be a plane a foot square, and X3 a cube measuring a foot in each
dimension. But what about X4? There are no more spatial
dimensions. Modern mathematics has (unfortunately, I think) agreed to consider
this fourth dimension as time. Well, and X5? To interpret this expression,
we may begin to consider other qualities, such as electric capacity, colour,
moral attributes, and so on.3
But this remark, although necessary, leads us rather away from our main thesis instead of
toward it.
16. What happens when we put a minus sign before the index (that small
letter up on the right) instead of a plus? Quite simple.
x2 = X1+1 = X1 + X1.
With a minus, we divide instead of multiplying. Thus, X3-2 = X3 ÷
X2 = X1, just as if you had merely subtracted the 2 from the 3 in the index.
Now, at last, we come to the point of real importance to our thesis: how shall
we interpret X0? We may write it, obviously, as X1-1 or
Xn-n. Good, divide. Then X1 ÷ X1
= 1. This is the same, clearly enough, whatever X may be.
17. Ah, but what we started to do was discover the meaning of Nothing.
It is not correct to write it simply as 0; for that 0 implies an index
01, or 0{2}, or 0n. And if our Nothing is to be
absolute Nothing, then there is not only no figure, but no index either. So we must
write it as 00.
What is the value of this expression? We proceed as before; divide.
00 = 0n-n = 0n ÷ 0n = (0n ÷ 1)
× (1 ÷ 0n). Of course 0n ÷ 1 remains 0; but 1
÷ 0{n} = ∞.
That is, we have a clash of the "infinitely great" with the "infinitely
small;" that knocks out the "infinity" (and Advaitism with it!) and
leaves us with an indeterminate but finite number of utter variety.
That is: 00 can only be interpreted as "The Universe that we know."
18. So much for our demonstration. Some people have found fault with
the algebra; but the logical Equivalent is precisely parallel. Suppose
I wish to describe my study in one respect: I can say "No dogs are in
my study," or "Dogs are not in my study." I can make a little diagram:
D is the world of dogs; S is my study. Here it is:
Diagram 1
/*These two diagrams still have to be inserted. Also, I'll double check the equations above..*\
The squares are quite separate. The whole world outside the square D is
the world of no dogs: outside the square S, the world of no-study. But
suppose now that I want to make the Zero absolute, like our 00,
I must say "No dogs are not in my study."
Or, "There is no absence-of-dog in my study." That is the same as saying:
"Some doge are in my study;" diagram again:
Diagram 2
In Diagram 1, "the world where no dogs are" included the whole of
my study; in Diagram 2 that absence-of-dog is no longer there; so one
or more of them must have got in somehow.
That's that; I know it may be a little difficult at first; fortunately there
is a different way—the Chinese way—of stating the theorem in very
much simpler terms.
19. The Chinese, like ourselves, begin with the idea of "Absolute Nothing."
They "make an effort, and call it the Tao;" but that is exactly what
the Tao comes to mean, when we examine it. They see quite well, as we
have done above, that merely to assert Nothing is not to explain the
Universe; and they proceed to do so by means of a mathematical equation
even simpler than ours, involving as it does no operations beyond simple
addition and subtraction. They say "Nothing obviously means Nothing;
it has no qualities nor quantities." (The Advaitists said the same, and
then stultified themselves completely by calling it One!) "But,"
continue the sages of the Middle Kingdom, "it is always possible to reduce
any expression to Nothing by taking any two equal and opposite terms."
(Thus n+ = (-n) = 0.) "We ought therefore to be able to get any expression
that we want from Nothing; we merely have to be careful that the terms shall
be precisely opposite and equal." (0 = n + (-n). This then
they did, and began to diagrammatize the Universe as the Yi—a pair of
opposites, the Yang or active male, and the Yin or passive Female,
principles. They represented the Yang by an unbroken ( — ), the Yin
by a broken ( — — ), line. (The first manifestation in Nature of these
two is Tai Yang, the Sun, and the Tai Yin, the Moon.) This being a little
large and loose, they doubled these lines, and obtained the four Xiang.
They then took them three at a time, and got the eight Kwa. These
represent the development from the original Yi to the Natural Order of
the Elements.
The serious student will find this whole subject amply developed in The
Chinese Texts of Magick and Mysticism, Equinox V, 3.
I shall call the male principle M, the Female F.
| M.1. ☰ | | Qian | "Heaven-Father". |
F.1. ☷ | Kun | "Earth-Mother" |
| M.2. ☲ | Li | The Sun |
F.2. ☵ | Kan | The Moon |
| M.3. ☳ | | Zhen | Fire |
F.3. ☱ | | Dui | Water |
| M.4. ☴ | | Sun | Air |
F.4. ☶ | | Gen | Earth |
Note how admirably they have preserved the idea of balance. M.1. and
F.1. are perfection. M.2. and F.2. still keep balance in their lines.
The four "elements" show imperfection; yet they are all balanced as
against each other. Note, too, how apt are the ideograms. M.3. shows
the flames flickering on the hearth, F.3., the wave on the solid bottom
of the sea; M.4., the mutable air, with impenetrable space above, and
finally F.4., the thin crust of the earth masking the interior energies
of the planet. They go in to double these Kwâ, thus reaching the sixty-four
Hexagrams of the Yî King, which is not only a Map, but a History
of the Order of Nature.
It is pure enthusiastic delight in the Harmony and Beauty of the System
that has led me thus far afield; my one essential purpose is to show
how the Universe was derived by these Wise Men from Nothing.
When you have assimilated these two sets of Equations, when you have
understood how 0 = 2 is the unique, the simple, and the necessary solution
of the Riddle of the Universe, there will be, in a sense, little more
for you to learn about the Theory of Magick.
You should, however, remember most constantly that the equation of the
Universe, however complex it may seem, inevitably reels out to Zero;
for to accomplish this is the formula of your Work as a Mystic. To
remind you, and to amplify certain points of the above, let me quote
from Book Four Part III:
Pages 152-153, footnote 2, in the original edition. Book Four Part III Commented, subtitled
Thelemic Magick, will be issued soon.
All elements must at one time have been separate—that would be the
case with great heat. Now when atoms get to the sun, we get that immense
extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again. Imagine that
each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in
combination. By the way, that atom (fortified with that memory) would
not be the same atom; yet it is, because it has gained nothing from
anywhere except this memory. Therefore, by the lapse of time, and by
virtue of memory, a thing could become something more than itself; thus
a real development is possible. One can then see a reason for any element
deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and
only so, can he go; and he suffers the lapse of memory which he has
during these incarnations, because he knows he will come through un-
changed.
Therefore you can have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal
though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible. This is
also the only explanation of how a "Perfect Being" could create a world
in which war, evil, etc., exist. God is only an appearance, because
(like "good") it cannot affect the substance itself, but only multiply
its combinations. This is something the same as mystic monotheism; but
all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false. If we presuppose
many elements, their interplay is natural.
It is no objection to this theory to ask who made the elements—the
elements are at least there, and God, when you look for him, is not there.
Theism is obscurum per obscurius. A male star is built up from
the centre outwards; a female from the circumference inwards. This is
what is meant when we say that woman has no soul. It explains fully
the difference between the sexes.
The reader will understand that all this is pure speculative thinking, although on a much
higher level than that of theologians. Theurgists have what we call "religious experiences" and some of them,
very imprudently, deduce from such experiences an idea of "God." From that moment on the theologian, that vermin
of religion, is on "safe" ground. A theologian does not criticize his or her religion's idea of "God;" all
their "reasoning" is a manipulation of dogma. As to the speculation about how male stars and female stars
are built, it is sheer nonsense. The star itself is omnisexual; it is the instrument that becomes "limited" in
this regard at birth. This subject is thoroughly treated in Equinox V 4, subtitled "Sex and Religion." The idea
that a woman has no "soul" is a purely Semitic idea; it springs from the cultural attitude of Arabs and Jews towards
women. However, when one considers the utter docility with which Arabic women and Jewish women have for centuries
acquiesced in theologies that insult and denigrate their sex, one wonders if woman does have, if not a soul, at
least a brain. "Obscurum per obscuris" means, roughly, a false argument based on a false premise, leading to
more confusion that there was at the start. Crowley's final paragraph dispels any doubt that he had progressed
beyond speculations about woman's "soul" by the time of this writing:
Every "act of love under will" has the dual result
(1) the creation of
a child combining the qualities of its parents,
(2) the withdrawal by
ecstasy into Nothingness.
Please consult what I have elsewhere written
on "The Formula of Tetagrammaton;" the importance of this at the
moment is to show how 0 and 2 appear constantly in Nature as the common
Order of Events.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER SIX: The Three Schools of Magick (1)
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Here is the first section of M. Gerard Aumont's promised essay;
it was originally called "The Three Schools of Magick." (Don't be
cross, please, because it is not in the form of a personal letter!)
As previously stated, although Gerard Aumont did exist and was a Crowley pupil for a while,
this essay was written by Crowley himself as part of his campaign against Besant and Leadbeater. The White School
and the Yellow are brilliantly described and commented upon; the Black School, however, is not touched at all.
The Black School of Magick is, of course, connected with the black peoples of the Earth: Africans and Australasians.
Direct reference to it is made in AL I, 37, under African terminology.
The reader will notice that in all three letters devoted to this long essay Crowley does not treat of the
real Black School at all. Instead, he does one of those manipulation jobs very common among Adepts, to
take advantage of the connotation of "Black" with "Evil" in the mind of followers of the more debased
cults of humankind, and of the color prejudice against black people on the part of the average vulgar white - and
yellow! — person. He was not here concerned with "truth" in the normal sense. As he himself stated in his
Commentary to Chapter 45 of Liber 333:
The Master (in technical language, the Magus) does not concern himself with facts; he does not care
whether
a thing is true or not: he uses truth and falsehood indiscriminately, to serve his ends. Slaves consider him
immoral, and preach against him in Hyde Park.
This statement is neither true nor false. The point the reader must keep in mind is that all references to
the "Black School" here made are highly imaginative, to put it mildly. Crowley was in fact referring specifically
to a sub-branch of the White School, for the Hindus - the true Aryans! - are members of the White School,
for all that their skin often looks blacker than that of a Negro. The confusion is made more confused by adding
the Buddha to the story, for the Buddha was actually a Yellow School member. But since the Theosophical Society,
after falling in the clutches of two unworthy disciples of the dead Master, was trying to use religion to further
the alleged political interests of India and the actual financial interests of maharajas and "maharishis"
and "gurujis" etc., etc., ad nauseam. Crowley, indignant that they dared step on his turf and were actually
playing dirty, played dirty as well — and much more successfully.
You must not feel sympathy towards Annie Besant and her accomplice: she did not really care for
India itself at all: what she had in mind was power. She wanted India to become independent of the British
Empire,
but to fall under her domination. Her dream was to be the "grey eminence" behind the throne, or the republic,
or whatnot.
And from an independent India, how powerful would the Theosophical Society become! Why, as powerful as the
Vatican,
nay more! Think of it: Annie Besant, the White Popess of the Orient! ...In a sense, almost a feminist dream.
But very far from the Master, Blavatsky, a true feminist by the way.
The Hindus, if you discount propaganda, are one of the most callous, stupid, selfish and cruel peoples
in the world. In their way, they are exactly as callous and selfish as that sub-cultural group called the
Christists. Misery in India is terrible; the absolute scorn for the rights in individuals who do not belong
to the ruling gang and for the sufferings of the poor is dreadful. Here is a nation that has one of the biggest
cattle herds in the entire world but where daily children die of starvation because the parents are vegetarians,
and Hindus neither plant enough nor control (surprise, surprise!) their sexual appetites. One could go on for
hours speaking of the peoples of the Bengal peninsula and detailing their psychology, politics, and material
reality, but it is useless to do so. The serious reader will find more than enough testimony about them in works
by intelligent Western visitors of that region; even Ms. Shirley McLaine, in her first autobiographical book
of travels (not the silly one about China) managed to draw an accurate portrait of what is wrong with that zone.
It should be interesting to ponder that Christist countries, without the influence of the so—called "Rosicrucians,"
of the Qabalist Jews of Maimonides, and of the Moors, would be exactly under the same plight.
Yet, the influence of Besant and Leadbeater was sufficiently strong in the West to provide the "maharishis" and
"secret Hindu masters" with enough of an entry, at least in the United States of America, that they not only became
millionaires with the greatest of ease, but are favorably received where a Thelemite would be shunned and feared.
In part this is due to the relentless campaign of vengeance that the Theosophical Society, or at least that section of
it under Besant and Leadbeater's influence, moved against Crowley (and continue moving against Crowley) ever since.
Interestingly enough, the Vatican has taken enormous advantage of the Toshosophists's as Crowley called them, hatred
for Θελημα. It is not only the Magus who uses truth or falsehood indiscriminately
for his own purposes!
This statement
about the Magus, however, must be clearly understood. Some things that seem to the average human being to be eternal
verites are actually quite false: they are dreams of the untrained mind, often derived from subconscious impulses of
fear or greed. It is of this kind of thing that Crowley said that the Magus takes advantage to put his Law across.
however, to go deeply into this matter would but confuse the reader, who not only would be unable to understand us,
but very likely would, which is worse, completely misinterpret what we said. Crowley was very right when he stated
that true secrets cannot be revealed (that's why they are secrets.) Unless you yourself have experience of the states
of consciousness of which it is being spoken, you will not understand what is being spoken, no matter how clearly it
is stated, or by whom.
One last remark before we go into the Essay itself: precisely as readers should be careful of the
emotional connotations of "Black" that may exist in their minds when reading what follows, they should also be careful of
the connotations of "White." What is "white" is not necessarily "good" or "beautiful" or "just," it is merely white; and
in the sense meant by the essay, the word White refers to that racial group of humankind that falls under the name of the
"white races." This includes not only Nordic and Caucasian, but also Semite and Aryan groups, as well as the ancient
Egyptians, who looked copper-skinned rather than white. If you do not keep this firmly in mind, it is unlikely that you
will profit much from the reading of what follows; and what follows, to a mind that keeps its guard, is truly profitable
reading. It will teach you a lot about the White and Yellow Schools of Magick - although very little about the Black!
There is today much misunderstanding of the meaning of the term "Magick."
Many attempts have been made to define it, but perhaps the best for our
present purpose of historical-ideological exposition will be this—Magick
is the Science of the Incommensurables.
This is one of the many restricted uses of the word; one suited to
the present purpose.
It is particularly to be noted that Magick, so often mixed up in the
popular idea of a religion, has nothing to do with it. It is, in fact,
the exact opposite of religion; it is, even more than Physical Science,
its irreconcilable enemy.
Which is why all religions attack us.
Let us define this difference clearly. Magick investigates the laws of Nature with the idea of
making use of them.
It only differs from "profane" science by always keeping ahead of it.
As Fraser has shown, Magick is science in the tentative stage; but it may be, and
often is, more than this. It is science which, for one reason or another,
cannot be declared to the profane.
This does not mean that those willing and able to do so cannot reproduce the experiments of the
teacher, and verify his or her own conclusions for their own benefit. However, the stages of consciousness which
compose spiritual progress are unintelligible and incommunicable to those who have not undergone the training
necessary to experience them, or who are constitutionally incapable of undergoing them.
Religion, on the contrary, seeks to ignore the laws of Nature, or to
escape them by appeal to a postulated power which is assumed to have
laid them down. The religious man is, as such, incapable of understanding
what the laws of Nature really are. (They are generalizations from
the order of observed fact.)
The History of Magick has never been seriously attempted. ...
All those "histories of Magic" written so far, including Levi's, are either sketchy,
misleading, downright false, or sectarian.
... For one
reason, only initiates pledged to secrecy know much about it; for
another, every historian has been talking about some more or less
conventional idea of Magick, not of the thing itself. But Magick has
led the world from before the beginning of history, if only for the reason
that Magick has always been the mother of Science. It is, therefore,
of extreme importance that some effort should be made to understand
something of the subject; and there is, therefore, no apology necessary
for essaying this brief outline of its historical aspects.
There have always been, at least in nucleus, three main Schools of
Philosophical practice. (We use the word "philosophical" in
the old good broad sense, as in the phrase "Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge.")
The word "philosophy" is from the Greek, and actually means "love of wisdom."
It is customary to describe these three Schools as Yellow, Black, and
White. The first thing necessary is to warn the reader that they must
by no means be confounded with racial distinctions of colour...
In this you find Crowley's true attitude towards the black race: he is about to embark
upon an Operation that might result to their harm, and he is defusing that possibility at the start, while
having every intention to use racial prejudice if he can to neutralize the efforts of Besant and Leadbeater.
...; and they
correspond still less with conventional symbols such as yellow caps,
yellow robes, black magick, white witchcraft, and the like. The danger
is only the greater that these analogies are often as alluring as the
prove on examination to be misleading.
These Schools represent three perfectly distinct and contrary theories
of the Universe, and, therefore, practices of spiritual science. ...
This statement, is, of course, incorrect, and we will call the attention of readers to this
fact when it becomes apparent. Keeping in mind the purpose for which the essay was written, however, you will
immensely profit from its purely initiatic aspects.
... The
magical formula of each is as precise as a theorem of trigonometry.
Each assumes as fundamental a certain law of Nature, and the subject is
complicated by the fact that each School, in a certain sense, admits the
formulæ of the other two. ...
This is actually Thelemically incorrect. Cf. AL. III 49-56. But since he was trying to awaken
irritation against and opposition to the 'Toshosophists,' it would have been impolitical on his part to let escape
that he despised the people he intended to use just as much as he despised the people he intended to use them
against - or perhaps just a little less.
This kind of operation, by the way, has never been known to be successful in the long run. It is much better to take
the stand that the Lord of the Aeon took from the start. it may bring you centuries of suffering and persecution,
but you will succeed — and your success will be much purer than it would have been with the "help" of all those
troglodytes.
Think of making a "deal" with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Menachem Begin and the Popes
to "destroy the Red Menace." It has been tried repeatedly by corrupt American "presidents" like John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and now Ronald Reagan. Can you see any historical evidence of "success" in the
present, or foresee any in the future?!?
... It merely regards them as in some way
incomplete, secondary, or illusory. Now, as will be seen later, the Yellow
School stand aloof from the other two by the nature of its postulates. But
the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict; and
it is because just at this moment that conflict is approaching a climax that it
is necessary to write this essay. The adepts of the White School consider
the present danger to mankind so great that they are prepared to abandon their
traditional policy of silence, in order to enlist in their ranks the profane of
every nation.
Fat use they would be!
We are in possession of a certain mystical document ...
Here Crowley added the note: "Liber CDXVIII, The Vision and the Voice." Mr. Germer added
the following to this note: "New edition with Introduction and Commentary by 666. Thelema Publishing Co., Barstow,
California." This is another book that Mr. Israel Regardie pirated and adulterated, falsifying Crowley's
annotations with misleading insertions of his own, without taking the trouble to distinguish between Crowley's
material and his. This book, also, will be reprinted by us in its unadulterated form. Readers interested in it
who are not yet on our mailing list have only to write us requesting to be added to it, and will be able to subscribe
to it at pre-publications prices before it is publically issued.
... which we may
describe briefly, for convenience sake, as an Apocalypse of which we
hold the keys, thanks to the intervention of the Master who has appeared
at this grave conjuncture of Fate. This document consists of a series
of visions, in which we hear the various Intelligences whose nature it
would be hard to define, but who are at the very least endowed with
knowledge and power far beyond anything that we are accustomed to regard
as proper to the human race.
We must quote a passage from one of the most important of these documents.
The doctrine is conveyed, as is customary among Initiates, in the form of a
parable. Those who have attained even a mediocre degree of enlightenment
are aware that the crude belief of the faithful, and the crude infidelity of
the scoffer, with regard to matters of fact, are merely childish. Every
incident in Nature, true or false, possesses a spiritual significance.
It is this significance, and only this significance, that possesses any
philosophical value to the Initiate.
The orthodox need not be shocked, and the enlightened need not be contemptuous,
to learn that the passage which we are about to quote, is a parable based on
the least decorous of the Biblical legends which refer to Noah.
It simply captures for its own purposes the convenience of Scripture...
Not so: this is the true legend, or rather initiatic fable, of which the Bible version is a
corruption and falsification, perhaps unintended; for each of us can only see or hear or understand as far as we
are capable.
Notice the reference to the "indecorous" nature of the fable: he is apologizing beforehand to the prejudice of
the people who forbade the reading of the Bible lest its franker passages corrupt or disillusion the faithful.
From the point of view of a modern teenager, the whole story is quite innocent; but it was not innocent to orthodox
Jews, who to this day copulate in darkness, since the sight of the naked human body is wicked! Those, incidentally,
are the kind of people who trained the adolescent Menachem Begin to murder women, children, and fellow Jews — and
as "reward" for his murders elected him "Prime Minister of Israel" in his old age.
(Here follows the excerpt from the Vision.)
And a voice cries: Cursed be he that shall uncover the nakedness of
the Most High, for he is drunken upon the wine that is the blood of the
adepts. ...
That is, he is a Magus, although not necessarily the Magus of the Aeon in which he lives.
"... And BABALON hath lulled him to sleep upon her breast, and
she hath fled away, and left him naked, and she hath called her children
together saying: Come up with me, and let us make a mock of the nakedness
of the Most High...
In a sense, the perception of the nakedness means the perception of the limitations or
inadequacies inherent in the Law extant at the time when the adepts first perceive that their "father" is "naked,"
that is, that the extant Law is inadequate. You must realize that no law, on any level or any sense, is inadequate
until someone perceives it is, and proves it!
... And the first of the adepts covered His shame with a cloth, walking
backwards, and was white. And the second of the adepts covered his
shame with a cloth, walking sideways, and was yellow. And the third
of the adepts made a mock of His nakedness, walking forward, and was
black ..."
Now, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Racial Strains of magick; rather with the
attitude with which the Adepts react to the previous Law, now found insufficient or inadequate. The "White"
so-called perceive it is inadequate, but react as if it weren't, disguising its insufficiency and acting as if
that Law were valuable: they walk backwards from it, paying it homage in the old style of courtiers towards a
king or emperor. The "Yellow" perceive its inadequacy and conceal it; but they no longer obey that law; they
walk sideways from it. The "Black" advance and expose its inadequacy, and ridicule it. We, therefore, of Θελημα,
are the true "Black School" of Magick, as defined in the apologue, in the present Aeon. Have you ever seen a
"maharishi" denounce established cults or speak against whatever knaves may be "rulers" of whatever country the
"maharishi" makes his millions in...?
In the above sense, "Black" is used as the color of "Evil." We create scandal, we create discord, we "make waves."
And whoever does this has only two alternatives: either remain the "Devil" until that Law becomes impotent with time,
or is destroyed by someone, or destroy that Law themselves, and become "God."
... "And these are the three great schools of the Magi, who are also
the three Magi that journeyed unto Bethlehem; and because thou hast not
wisdom, thou shalt not know which school prevaileth, or if the three
schools be not one.
Essentially, of course, they are one, since humankind is one; but in manifestation they have to
be separate. Remember the Equation!
We are now ready to study the philosophical bases of these three Schools. We must, however,
enter a caveat against too literal an interpretation,
even of the parable. It may be suspected, for reasons which should be
apparent after further investigation of the doctrines of the Three
Schools, that this parable was invented by an Intelligence of the Black
School, who was aware of his iniquity, and thought to transform it into
righteousness by the alchemy of making a boast of it ...
By the above interpretation we can see how far Crowley was from perception of AL III when
he wrote this. The Intelligence who was telling the parable was not taking sides at all: It was merely stating
that whatever adept, or whatever School of Adepts, mocked or criticized the "Establishment" was considered "black,"
that is to say, "evil." But cf. AL, I 21, 28-31, 49, 52-56, 60; II, 5, 14, 23, 52; III, 19, 43-45, 54.
... The intelligent
reader will note the insidious attempt to identify the doctrine of the
Black School with the kind of black magic that is commonly called
Diabolism. In other words, this parable is itself an example of an
exceedingly subtle black magical operation, and the contemplation of
such devices carried far enough beings us to an understanding of the
astoundingly ophidian processes of Magicians ...
Now, here he is mocking the foolish reader, and warning the wise not to take him too seriously,
yet take him seriously enough. I know this will sound perplexing to the average reader; all one can say it, too
bad you are average: try to change, if you can!
It goes without saying that it would be extremely silly of the "Black School" to call attention to its own
"blackness!" Unless, of course, the intention were to provide an Ordeal - cf. AL II, 53.
... Let not the profane
reader dismiss such subtleties from his mind as negligible nonsense.
It is cunning of this kind that determines the price of potatoes.
The above digression is perhaps not so inexcusable as it may seem on a
first reading. Careful study of it should reveal the nature of the
thought-processes which are habitually used by the secret Masters of
the human race to determine its destiny.
When everyone has done laughing, I will ask you to compare the real
effects produced on the course of human affairs by Caesar, Attila, and
Napoleon, on the one hand; of Plato, the Encyclopaedists, and Karl Marx
on the other.
Here Crowley added the following note: "It is interesting to note that the three greatest
influences in the world today are those of Teutonic Hebrews: Marx, Hertz, and Freud."
Notice that these are influences for evolution, or change.
The Yellow School of Magick considers, with complete scientific and
philosophical detachment, the fact of the Universe as a fact. Being
itself apart of that Universe, it realizes its impotence to alter the
totality in the smallest degree. To put it vulgarly, it does not try to
raise itself from the ground by pulling at its socks. It therefore
opposes to the current of phenomena no reaction either of hatred or of
sympathy. So far as it attempts to influence the course of events at
all, it does so in the only intelligent way conceivable. It seeks to
diminish internal friction.
It remains, therefore, in a contemplative attitude. To use the terms
of Western philosophy, there is in its attitude something of the stoicism
of Zeno; or of the Pickwickianism, if I may use the term, of Epicurus.
The ideal reaction to phenomena is that of perfect elasticity. It
possesses something of the cold-bloodedness of mathematics; and for
this reason it seems fair to say, for the purposes of elementary study,
that Pythagoras is its most adequate exponent in European philosophy.
Since the discovery of Asiatic thought, however, we have no need to
take our ideas at second-hand. The Yellow School of Magick possesses
one perfect classic. The Tao Teh King.
See Equinox V, III, "The Chinese Texts of Magick and Mysticism," published by the O.T.O..
At the time this essay was written Crowley added the following note:
"Unfortunately there is no translation
at present published which is the work of an Initiate. All existing translations have been garbled by people
who simply failed to understand the text. An approximately perfect rendering is indeed available, but so far it
exists only in manuscript. One object of this letter is to create sufficient public interest to make this work,
and others of equal value available to the public."
This is now being done by us
It is impossible to find any religion which adequately represents the
thought of this masterpiece. Not only is religion as such repugnant
to science and philosophy, but from the very nature of the tenets of the
Yellow School, its adherents are not going to put themselves to any
inconvenience for the enlightenment of a lot of people whom they consider
to be hopeless fools.
At the same time, the theory of religion, as such, being a tissue of
falsehood, the only real strength of any religion is derived from its
pilferings of Magical doctrine; and, religious persons being by defini-
tion entirely unscrupulous, it follows that any given religion is likely
to contain scraps of Magical doctrine, filched more or less haphazard
from one school or the other as occasion serves.
Let the reader, therefore, beware most seriously of trying to get a grasp
of this subject by means of siren analogies. Taoism has as little to
do with the Tao Teh King as the Catholic Church with the Gospel.
An extremely poor analogy: the Dao De Jing has existed intact for centuries: the "Gospel" is
a forgery perpetrated by the Roman-Alexandrinians. See Letter to a Brasilian Mason, published by the O.T.O.
One must remember, however, the kind of people for whom he was writing.
The Tao Teh King inculcates conscious inaction, or rather unconscious
inaction, with the object of minimizing the disorder of the world. A
few quotations from the text should make the essence of the doctrine clear.
| X 3 |
Here is the Mystery of Virtue. It createth all and nourisheth
all; yet it doth not adhere to them. It operateth all; but
knoweth not of it, nor proclaimeth it; it directeth all, but
without conscious control. |
| XXII 2 |
Therefore the sage concentrateth upon one Will, and it is as
a light to the whole world. Hiding himself, he shineth;
withdrawing himself, he attracteth notice; humbling himself,
he gaineth force to achieve his Will. Because he striveth
not, no man may contend against him. |
| XLIII 1 |
The softest substance hunteth down the hardest. The Unsubstantial
penetrateth where there is no opening. Here is the Virtue of Inertia. |
| 2 |
Few are they who attain: whose speech is Silence, whose Work is Inertia. |
| XLVIII 3 |
He who attracteth to himself all that is under Heaven doth so without effort.
He who maketh effort is not able to attract it. |
| LVIII 3 |
The wise man is foursquare and avoideth aggression; his
corners do not injure others. He moveth in a straight line,
and turneth not aside therefrom; he is brilliant, but doth
not blind with his brightness. |
| LXIII 2 |
Do great things while they are yet small, hard things while
they are yet easy; for all things, how great or hard soever,
have a beginning when they are little and easy. So thus the
wise man accomplisheth the greatest tasks without undertaking
anything important. |
| LXXVI 2 |
So then rigidity and hardness are the stigmata of death; elasticity and adaptability of life. |
| 3 |
He then who putteth forth strength is not victorious; even as a strong tree filleth the embrace. |
| 4 |
Thus the hard and rigid have the inferior place, the soft and elastic the superior. |
Enough, I think, for this part of the essay.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER SEVEN: The Three Schools of Magick (2)
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Hoping that you are now recovered from the devastating revelations in
the matter of the Yellow School, I must ask you to brace yourself for
disclosures even more formidable about the Black. Do not confuse with
the Black Lodge, or the Black Brothers. The terminology is unfortunate,
but it wasn't I that did it. Now then, to work!
He next returns to the original essay written under the "Gerard Aumont" pseudonym.
The Black School of Magick, which must by no means be confused with the
School of Black Magick or Sorcery, which latter is a perversion of the
White tradition ...
Now here we must again introduce a caveat. (This word is from Latin, and means 'warning.'
Crowley, like many cultured intellects, uses it often, so you might as well get accustomed to it.) Please keep
in mind that the "Black School" mentioned in this essay is not the "Black School" mentioned in the Initiated
Apologue quoted from The Vision and the Voice. The former is merely a failure of Initiatic Courage to face facts,
while the latter, at least in this Aeon, is us, the Thelemites. Crowley is lying on certain planes and telling the
truth on others in the following paragraphs. We will try to help you keep track of what is 'true' and what is 'false'
about what he says, but you must also try to find your own way through the maze if you can. Consider it an exercise
in listening to political speeches!
..., is distinguished fundamentally from the Yellow School
in that it considers the Universe not as neutral, but as definitely a
curse. Its primary theorem is the "First Noble Truth" of
the Buddha—"Everything is Sorrow." In the primitive classics of this School the
idea of sorrow is confused with that of sin ...
This absolutely was not the intention of the Buddha when he spoke: he merely stated a fact;
the "moral" implications given to that fact were the result of vehicular indiscipline on the part of followers
unable to face the Master and listen to the "Secret" He spoke.
(This idea of universal
lamentation is presumably responsible for the choice of black as its
symbolic colour. And yet? Is not white the Chinese hue of mourning?)
This parenthesis is a broad hint to the intelligent reader.
The analysis of the philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon
to the category of sorrow. It is quite useless to point out to them
that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless
calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction,
that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive
is its fascination. There is only one way of
escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation.
(Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity
on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different
from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine
to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands
to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not
sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment
of nothingness.)
This attack on Buddhism is the more incisive because Crowley had been a very orthodox Buddhist
prior to the Dictation of The Book of the Law. Nevertheless, there are two things wrong with it. First, what the
Buddha mean by 'annihilation' was the result of the Trance Nerodah-Sammapatti, which roughly corresponds to the
Samadhi Shivadarshana, which Crowley himself admits is a higher state of Samadhi than Atmadarshana. The Buddha
preached detachment from the illusion of existence, not extinction of existence. His followers were not encouraged
to commit suicide, but to reach a higher level of perception than that of the mass of humankind,
slave of circumstances.
The second wrong this is that the 'Toshosophy' of Besant and Leadbeater has nothing at all to
do with serious
Buddhism of any sort. It is rather a debased form of Brahmanism mixed up with absurd legends. There are certain
"secret masters" who are always quite mysterious, quite inaccessible, but extremely powerful, devotion to whom - and
lots of money paid to the representatives of — will ensure the 'faithful' all kinds of fantastic powers or
privileges or advantages. The Besant-Leadbeater pantheon includes not only Morya and Koot Hoomi, Blavatsky's
supposed gurus, but a medley of legendary figures from all times: the "Master Jesus," the "Master Racoczy," the
"Master Hilarion," the "Master Maitreya," etc., etc. The analogy with the "saints" of Roman Catholicism is flagrant;
the main difference is that, although there are female "saints" in the Roman Catholic pantheon, Leadbeater's
homosexuality precluded any in the Toshosophic. The "theosophy" of Besant and Leadbeater is a black magical
operation attempted along the very same lines as Christism, and would probably have been as "successful" as
Christism had Crowley not intervened. But Buddhism itself is merely a branch of the Yellow School, and as we
observed before, the real Black School of Magick, the School of the Black Race, is not touched upon in Crowley's essay.
Western philosophy has on occasion approached this doctrine. It has at
least asserted that no known form of existence is exempt from sorrow.
Huxley says, in his Evolution and Ethics, "Suffering is the badge of
all the tribe of sentient things."
Not Aldous Huxley the writer, but his grandfather, the great biologist and stylist Thomas Henry
Huxley, the first respected scientist to publicly defend and accept Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution in England.
The philosophers of this School, seeking, naturally enough, to amend the
evil at the root, inquire into the cause of this existence which is
sorrow, and arrive immediately at the "Second Noble Truth" of the Buddha:
"The Cause of Sorrow is Desire." They follow up with the endless
concatenation of causes, of which the final root is Ignorance. (I am not
concerned to defend the logic of this School: I merely state their
doctrine.) The practical issue of all this is that every kind of action
is both unavoidable and a crime. I must digress to explain that the
confusion of thought in this doctrine is constantly recurrent. That is
part of the blackness of the Ignorance which they confess to be the
foundation of their Universe. (And after all, everyone has surely the
right to have his own Universe the way he wants it.)
It is extremely unlikely that the true thought of the Buddha is represented in Buddhism any
more than the true thought of Dionysus is represented in Christism or, alas! the true thought of Crowley will
represented in Crowleyanity a hundred years from now. We are just at the beginning, and the trouble caused by
the Stansfeld Joneses, the Grants, the Yorkes, the Regardies, the McMurtrys, the Heflins and perhaps the Mottas
is already apparent!
This School being debased by nature, is not so far removed from conventional
religion as either the White or the Yellow ...
This blow below the belt does not touch the Buddha in the least, of course.
As we said before, the entire essay was meant as an attack on existing religion, an advertisement for
Thelemic religion (as he conceived it at the time) and a broadside aimed at Besant and Leadbeater who, having
failed in their attempt to set Krishnamurti up as "World Savior" (to be manipulated by them from behind), were
beginning to make Buddhistic noises to infiltrate France and from there the rest of Europe.
... Most primitive
fetishistic religions may, in fact, be considered fairly faithful
representatives of this philosophy. Where animism holds sway, the
"medicine-man" personifies this universal evil, and seeks to propitiate
it by human sacrifice. The early forms of Judaism, and that type of
Christianity which we associate with the Salvation Army, Billy Sunday
and the Fundamentalists of the back-blocks of America, are sufficiently
simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon.
Any form of Christism is such propitiation: the Nicene Creed postulates it.
We refer the reader to Letter to a Brasilian Mason on this subject.
When the light of intelligence begins to dawn dimly through many fogs
upon these savages, we reach a second stage. Bold spirits master courage
to assert that the evil which is so obvious, is, in some mysterious way, an
illusion. They thus throw back the whole complexity of sorrow to a single
cause; that is, the arising of the illusion aforesaid. The problem then
assumes a final form: How is that illusion to be destroyed.
A very wicked thing, to go against Deity like this. Why, if "God" had meant man to fly, "he"
would have given them wings. Et cetera and so forth. Attempts to destroy to illusion of Christism, for example, were
accompanied by torture and genocide for several centuries. It is a characteristic of religions started and maintained
by Black Brothers that heretics are not to be permitted. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," etc. etc.
A fairly pure example of the first stage of this type of thought is to
be found in the Vedas; of the second stage, in the Upanishads ...
You will notice that nothing of this has anything to do with Buddhism or the Buddha; his main
intention in the essay is to discredit anything that comes from the Orient, with the single exception of Chinese
philosophy. This was due to the fact that Besant and Leadbeater hid the miasma of the conmanship behind a medley
of Hindu and pseudo-Buddhistic lore. Their "Hidden Masters" lived somewhere in a vague region of the East that
kept jumping all over the Bengal Peninsula, Tibet, and sometimes even the Gobi desert: "Shambalah," where the "gods"
live - that kind of thing. The modern reader may not realize how this whole mystification was popular at a time
not so long ago. James Hilton's very successful, and very commonplace, novel Lost Horizons was inspired by it,
although his Shangri-La was, of course, his own creation even in the name. How it must have annoyed the
Toshosophists that he did not use the term "Shamabalah"... But perhaps they would have protested against it;
they were, and are, stupid enough to. Meanwhile, the Master Blavatsky's true intention, which was a weakening of
the fanaticism of the Christist stranglehold on the West, was going down the drain until Crowley picked it up and
carried it on.
... But the
answer to the question, "How is the illusion of evil to be destroyed?",
depends on another point of theory. We may postulate a Parabrahm infinitely good,
etc. etc. etc., in which case we consider the destruction of the illusion of evil as the
reuniting of the consciousness with Parabrahm. The unfortunate part of this scheme of
things is that on seeking to define Parabrahm for the purpose of returning to Its purity,
it is discovered sooner or later, that It possesses no qualities at all!
In other words, as the farmer said, on being shown the elephant: There ain't no sich
animile. It was Gautama Buddha who perceived the inutility of dragging in this
imaginary pachyderm. Since our Parabrahm, he said to the Hindu philosophers, is
actually nothing, why not stick to or original perception that everything is sorrow, and
admit that the only way to escape from sorrow is to arrive at nothingness?
We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To
the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we
have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools.
Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced
of the Hindus ...
Madame Blavatsky used Tantrism very discreetly, and one of her followers, Sir John Woodroffe
("Arthur Avalon"), translated many important Tantric texts into English. The reaction of Anglicanism and Roman
Catholicism, to say nothing of the other Christist sects, against it was extremely sharp, and Besant and Leadbeater
abandoned the whole effort: Who wants to make money out of "religion" never attacks the status quo.
... Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive
stage of the White tradition ...
The reader is again reminded that although our School is indeed the White School from a racial
point of view it is the School called "black" in the Initiated Apologue quoted from The Vision and the Voice, at
least at present.
... for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by
the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but
obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die.
It is a difficult business, no doubt, to get any fun out of existence; but at least it
is not impossible. In other words, he implicitly denies the fundamental proposition that
existence is sorrow, and he formulates the essential postulate of the
White School of Magick, that means exist by which the universal sorrow
(apparent indeed to all ordinary observation) may be unmasked, even as
at the initiatory rite of Isis in the ancient days of Khem. There, a
Neophyte presenting his mouth, under compulsion, to the pouting buttocks
of the Goat of Mendez, found himself caressed by the chaste lips of a
virginal priestess of that Goddess at the base of whose shrine is written
that No man has lifted her veil.
This description of the Egyptian Rites pertains already to the decayed days of Egypt, not
to the time of its power, and Crowley is quoting almost word for word from Levi's History of Magic and a chapter
of his Dogme et Rituel. Oh those chaste virginal priestesses!
The basis of the Black philosophy is not impossibly mere climate, with
its resulting etiolation of the native, its languid, bilious, anaemic,
fever-prostrated, emasculation of the soul of man ...
Wow! Perhaps you are beginning to understand what he was doing?
... We accordingly find
few true equivalents of this School in Europe. In Greek philosophy there
is no trace of any such doctrine ...
He passes over discreetly, of course, that the Hellenes came to Europe originally from
Asia, as did most other tribes from known history. Hence the established fact that most Indo-European languages
stem from ancient Sanskrit, in which the Vedas and the Upanishads were originally written.
... The poison in its foulest and most
virulent form only entered with Christianity ...
Here he added the following note: "Anti-Semite writers in Europe - for example Weininger - call
the Black theory and practice Judaism, while by a curious confusion, the same ideas are called Christian among
Anglo-Saxons. In 1936 e.v. the "Nazi" School began to observe this fact."
... But even so, few men of
any real eminence were found to take the axioms of pessimism seriously.
Huxley, for all of his harping on the minor key, was an eupeptic Tory ...
Meaning, a member of the Conservative Party gifted with a good digestion. The reader is
reminded this is Thomas Henry Huxley that is being spoken about.
... The
culmination of the Black philosophy is only found in Schopenhauer, and
we may regard him as having been obsessed, on the one hand, by the despair
born of that false scepticism which he learnt from the bankruptcy of Hume
and Kant; on the other, by the direct obsession of the Buddhist documents
to which he was one of the earliest Europeans to obtain access.
He was, so to speak, driven to suicide by his own vanity, a curious
parallel to Kiriloff in The Possessed of Dostoiewsky.
The reader will find good descriptions of the doctrines of all those three philosophers,
Schopenhauer, Hume and Kant, in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.
We have, however, examples plentiful enough of religions deriving almost
exclusively from the Black tradition in the different stages. We have
already mentioned the Evangelical cults with their ferocious devil-god
who creates mankind for the pleasure of damning it and forcing it to
crawl before him, while he yells with druken glee over the agony of his
only son ...
A bit along the lines of yellow journalism here; but he had learned a lot from them.
A footnote added at this point reads: "N.B. Christianity was in its first stage a Jewish Communism, hardly
distinguishable from Marxism." This is partly correct: most of the Essene sects from which the Jewish aspects
of Christism stem were Communist in structure. Again, see Letter to a Brasilian Mason for details.
... But in the same class, we must
place Christian Science, so grotesquely afraid of pain, suffering and evil
of every sort, that its dupes can think of nothing better than to bleat denials
of its actuality, in the hope of hypnotizing themselves into anaesthesia.
Practically no Westerns have reached the third stage of the Black tradition,
the Buddhist stage ...
We again remind the reader that Buddhism is a branch of the Yellow School of Magick, and not
of the Black School in the racial sense or of the Black School in the sense of the already quoted Apologue.
... It is only isolated mystics, and those men
who rank themselves with a contemptuous compliance under the standard
of the nearest religion, the one which will bother them least in their
quest of nothingness, who carry the sorites so far.
But the latter usually huddle under the dripping, bloody wing of Christism, rather than under
Buddhism of any sort.
The documents of the Black School of Magick have already been indicated.
They are, for the most part, tedious to the last degree and repulsive to
every wholesome-minded man ...
Lying outright as part of the policy behind this essay, since elsewhere in his writings he makes
plenty of references to the poetic beauty and nobility of thought in many of the Hindu Classics. They are in their
majority, anyway, far above the "Gospels" both in style and philosophical depth.
...; yet it can hardly be denied that such books
as The Dhammapada and Ecclesiastes are masterpieces of literature.
They represent the agony of human despair at its utmost degree of intensity,
and the melancholy contemplation which is induced by their perusal is
not favourable to the inception of that mood which should lead every
truly courageous intelligence to the determination to escape from the
ferule of the Black Schoolmaster to the outstretched arms of the White
Mistress of Life.
Oh, boy.
Let us leave the sinister figure of Schopenhauer for the mysteriously
radiant shape of Spinoza! This latter philosopher, in respect at least
of his Pantheism, represents fairly enough the fundamental thesis of the
White tradition ...
Although he was a Jew... Again, the reader is reminded not to take 'Black' and 'White,' to
say nothing of 'Yellow,' very seriously in this essay of Crowley's.
... Almost the first observation that we have to make is
that this White tradition is hardly discoverable outside Europe. It
appears first of all in the legend of Dionysus ...
Who, by they way, as Crowley knew extremely well, came to Europe from the Bengal Peninsula.
Politics is a dirty game, boys and girls.
... (In this connection
read carefully Browning's "Apollo and the Fates".)
The Egyptian tradition of Osiris is not dissimilar. The central idea
of the White School is that, admitted that "everything is sorrow"
for the profane, the Initiate has the means of transforming it to "Everything
is joy." There is no question of any ostrich-ignoring of fact,
as in Christian Science. There is not even any more or less sophisticated
argument about the point of view altering the situation as in Vedantism.
We have, on the contrary, and attitude which was perhaps first of all, historically
speaking, defined by Zoroaster, "nature teaches us, and the Oracles
also affirm, that even the evil germs of Matter may alike become useful and good."
"Stay not on the precipice with the dross of Matter; for there is a place for thine
Image in a realm ever splendid." "If thou extend the Fiery Mind to the work
of piety, thou wilt preserve the fluxible body."
However, as Crowley also knew perfectly well, these so-called Oracles of Zoroaster have as much to
do with Zoroaster the Magus from Persia as the "Gospels" have to do with Dionysus, or Blavatsky's "Stanzas of Dyan"
have to do with any ancient manuscript: they are all relatively modern forgeries; although to apply to word 'forgery'
to the "Oracles" is perhaps a little extreme: the writer adopted the pseudonym Zoroaster to write them, and perhaps
he was even called Zoroaster. But they have nothing to do with Persian religion.
Here Crowley added the following footnote: "This passage appears to be a direct hint at the Formula of the IX°
O.T.O., and the preparation of the Elixir of Life."
It appears that the Levant, from Byzantium and Athens to Damascus,
Jerusalem, Alexandria and Cairo, was preoccupied with the formulation
of this School in a popular religion, beginning in the days of Augustus
Caesar. For there are elements of this central idea in the works of
the Gnostics, in certain rituals of what Frazer conveniently calls the
Asiatic God, as in the remnants of the Ancient Egyptian cult. The
doctrine became abominably corrupted in committee, so to speak, and the
result was Christianity, which may be regarded as a White ritual overlaid
by a mountainous mass of Black doctrine, like the baby of the mother that
King Solomon non-suited.
The reader will notice that, despite the fact that he insisted at the beginning that the Black
Brothers and Black Magick should not be confused with the Black School of Magick, he is here doing exactly that.
The explanation is that he was simultaneously lying and warning the reader about what he intended to do, and is
now doing.
We may define the doctrine of the White School in its purity in very
simple terms.
The reader is again reminded that this is our School, and that it is the School called "Black" in
the Apologue from The Vision and the Voice. Are you getting a headache? Carry on...
Existence is pure joy. Sorrow is caused by failure to perceive this
fact; but this is not a misfortune. We have invented sorrow, which
does not matter so much after all, in order to have the exuberant satisfaction
of getting rid of it. Existence is thus a sacrament.
This is a not very scientific over-simplification of the doctrine expressed in AL, and if
carried to its furthest consequences may give rise, in the future, to as loathsome a theology and as corrupt a
religion as Christist theology and Christism itself. But we will refrain from any commentary on AL further
than those already extant in Equinox V 1 "The Commentaries of AL."
Adepts of the White School regard their brethren of the Black very much
as the aristocratic English Sahib (of the days when England was a nation)
regarded the benighted Hindu ...
A not very brotherly attitude, one may remark; but be reminded again that he is lying his head
off for his own main purposes: to propagandize Θελημα and further the discredit
of Besant and Leadbeater.
... Nietzsche expresses the philosophy of
this School to that extent with considerable accuracy and vigour. The
man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal
to it. The brave man rejoices in giving and taking hard knocks, and the
brave man is joyous. The Scandinavian idea of Valhalla may be primitive,
but it is manly ...
It may be remarked here that Nordic mythology was the first to introduce the concept of the
Warrior Woman into the West since the Greek legend of the Amazons. This in part was due to the fact that
Nordic women enjoyed sexual freedom and social equality from the beginning, and even the miasma of Christism
has been unable to rob them completely of their cultural heritage in this respect.
... A heaven of popular concert, like the Christian; of
unconscious repose, like the Buddhist; or even of sensual enjoyment, like
the Moslem, excites his nausea and contempt. He understands that the
only joy worth while is the joy of continual victory, and victory itself
would become as tame as croquet if it were not spiced by equally continual
defeat.
Such oversimplifications, as we remarked before, can give rise to crapulous creeds.
The "he" referred to here is the "brave man." It can be seen that at the time this essay was written
(Crowley had just been expelled from Sicily) his understanding of AL was still quite limited.
The purest documents of the White School are found in the Sacred Books
of Θελημα...
Ah, he got to it!...
... The doctrine is given in excellent perfection both in the
Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent
and The Book of Lapis Lazuli. A
single passage is adequate to explain the formula.
7. Moreover I beheld a vision of a river. There was a little boat thereon; and in it under
purple sails was a golden woman, an image of Asi wrought in finest gold. Also the river was of blood,
and the boat of shining steel. Then I
loved her; and, loosing my girdle, cast myself into the stream.
8. I gathered myself into the little boat, and for many days and nights did I love her,
burning beautiful incense before her.
9. Yea! I gave her of the flower of my youth.
10. But she stirred not; only by my kisses I defiled her so that she turned to blackness before me.
11. Yet I worshipped her, and gave her of the flower of my youth.
12. Also it came to pass, that thereby she sickened and corrupted before me. Almost I cast m
yself into the stream.
13. Then at the end appointed her body was whiter than the milk of the stars, and her lips red and
warm as the sunset, and her life of a white heat like the heat of the midmost sun.
14. Then rose she up from the abyss of Ages of Sleep, and her body embraced me. Altogether
I melted into her beauty and was glad.
15. The river also became the river of Amrit, and the little boat was the chariot of the flesh,
and the sails thereof the blood of the heart that beareth me, that beareth me.
Liber LXV, Cap. II.
We find even in profane literature this doctrine of the White School of Magick:&mdash
O Buddha! couldst thou nowhere rest
A pivot for the universe?
Must all things be alike confessed
Mere changes rung upon a curse?
I swear by all the bliss of blue
My Phryne with her powder on
Is just as false—and just as true—
As your disgusting skeleton.
Each to his taste: if you prefer
This loathly brooding on Decay;
I call it Growth, and lovelier
Than all the glamours of the day.
You would not dally with Doreen
Because her fairness was to fade,
Because you know the things unclean
That go to make a mortal maid.
I, if her rotten corpse were mine,
Would take it as my natural food,
Denying all but the Divine
Alike in evil and in good.
Aspasia may skin me close,
And Lais load me with disease.
Poor pleasures, bitter bargains, these?
I shall despise Diogenes.
Follow your fancy far enough!
At last you surely come to God.
The poem is, of course, by Crowley himself.
There is thus in this School no attempt to deny that Nature is, as Zoroaster
said, "a fatal and evil force"; but Nature is, so to speak,
"the First Matter of the Work", which is to be transmuted into gold.
The joy is a function of our own part in this alchemy. For this reason
we find the boldest and most skillful adepts deliberately seeking out
the most repugnant elements of Nature that their triumph may be the
greater. The formula is evidently one of dauntless courage. It
expresses the idea of vitality and manhood in its most dynamic sense.
The only religion which corresponds to this School at all is that of
ancient Egypt; possibly also that of Chaldea. This is because those
religions are Magical religions in the strict technical sense; the
religious component of them is negligible. So far as it exists, it
exists only for the uninitiate.
There are, however, traces of the beginning of the influence of the
School in Judaism and in Paganism. There are, too, certain documents
of the pure Greek spirit which bear traces of this. It is what they
called Theurgy.
The Christian religion in its simplest essence, by that idea of overcoming
evil through a Magical ceremony, the Crucifixion, seems at first
sight a fair example of the White tradition; but the idea of sin and
of propitiation tainted it abominably with Blackness. There have been,
however, certain Christian thinkers who have taken the bold logical step
of regarding evil as a device of God for exercising the joys of combat
and victory. This is, of course, a perfectly White doctrine; but it
is regarded as the most dangerous of heresies. (Romans VI. 1,2, et al.)
For all that, the idea is there ...
But the idea is not Thelemic at all, on the contrary. There is no "evil" in the doctrine of
The Book of the Law.
... The Mass itself is essentially a
typical White ritual. Its purpose is to transform crude matter directly
into Godhead. It is thus a cardinal operation of Talismanic Magick.
But the influence of the Black School has corroded the idea with theological
accretions, metaphysical on the one hand, and superstitious on the other,
so completely as to mask the Truth altogether.
Now this, of course, is altogether incorrect. The Black School as he interprets it in the
essay, meaning the Hindus and the Buddhists, had absolutely no influence on the corruption of the Gnostic Ritual
of the Mass at the hands of the Christists. He is deliberately equating the "Black School" with the Black Lodge
and the Black Brothers, to take advantage of the emotional connotations of the color "black" in the average Western
mind. He will get to Besant and Leadbeater eventually, as you will see, after having thoroughly confused the issue
for his own purpose, which, we remind the reader, was to discredit the Toshosophists and Eastern "maharishis" and
"gurujis" in general and to propagandize Θελημα as he then understood it.
At the Reformation, we find a nugatory attempt to remove the Black element.
The Protestant thinkers did their best to get rid of the idea of sin, but it was soon
seen that the effort could only lead to antinomianism; and they recognized that this
would infallibly destroy the religious idea as such.
Antinomianism is the Christist theological concept that "faith" alone is sufficient to ensure
"salvation." This does away with the "Devil," with "Jesus" and, what was more serious, with the need for priests,
pastors, or organized churches...!
Mysticism, both Catholic and Protestant, made a further attempt to free
Christianity from the dark cloud of iniquity. They joined hands with
the Sufis and the Vedantists. But this again led to the mere denial of
the reality of evil. Thus drawing away, little by little, from clear
appreciation of the facts of Nature, their doctrine became purely
theoretical, and faded away, while the thundercloud of sin settled down
more heavily than ever.
This reference can only be understood if you study the history of the ecumenical movement of the
late Nineteenth Century, with the creation of the World Council of Religions, at which Vivekananda made such a strong
showing. But obviously, any strengthening of sound systems of mysticism, such as Vedanta and Sufism, could - and
did - only lead to further weakening of Christist theology From our point of view, of course, this is all to the good.
From the point of view of the Jerry Falwells and Phyllis Schlaflys and the Popes, it is utter disaster, especially to
their purses.
The most important of all the efforts of the White School, from an exoteric
point of view, is Islam. In its doctrine there is some slight
taint, but much less than in Christianity. It is a virile religion.
It looks facts in the face, and admits their horror; but it proposes
to overcome them by sheer dint of manhood. Unfortunately, the
metaphysical conceptions of its quasi-profane Schools are grossly materialistic.
It is only the Pantheism of the Sufis which eliminates the conception of propitiation;
and, in practice, the Sufis are too closely allied to the Vedantists to retain hold of
reality.
Again, this is deliberately incorrect.
That will be all for the present.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER EIGHT: The Three Schools of Magick (3)
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
It has been a long—I hope not too tedious—voyage; but at last the
harbour is in sight.
Our Essay approaches its goal; the theory of Life to which initiation tends.
He means Thelemic initiation.
Let us continue!
The above paragraphs were cut out by Mr. Regardie in his "edition" of this book.
Perhaps he thought the definition of the Essay's goal too threatening to himself and his cronies.
There is in history only one movement whose object has been to organize
the isolated adepts of the White School of Magick, and this movement
was totally unconnected with religion, except in so far as it lent its
influence to the reformers of the Christian church. Its appeal was not
at all to the people. It merely offered to open up relations with, and
communicate certain practical secrets of wisdom to, isolated men of
science through Europe. This movement is generally known by the
name of Rosicrucianism.
The word arouses all sorts of regrettable correspondences; but the
adepts of the Society have never worried themselves in the least about
the abuse of their name for the purposes of charlatanism, or about the
attacks directed against them by envious critics. Indeed, so wisely
have they concealed their activities that some modern scholars of the
shallower type have declared that no such movement ever existed, that
it was a kind of practical joke played upon the curiosity of the credulous
Middle Ages. It is at least certain that, since the original
proclamations, no official publications have been put forward. The
essential secrets have been maintained inviolate. If, during the last
few years, a considerable number of documents have been published by
them, though not in their name, it is on account of the impending crisis
to civilization, of which mention will later be made.
There is no good purpose, even were there license, to discuss the nature
of the basis of scientific attainment which is the core of the doctrines
of the Society. It is only necessary to point out that its correspondence
with alchemy is the one genuine fact on the subject which has been allowed
to transpire; for the Rosicrucian, as indicated by his central symbol,
the barren cross on which he has made a rose to flower, occupies himself
primarily with spiritual and physiological alchemy. Taking for
"The First Matter of the Work a neutral or inert substance (it is
constantly described as the commonest and least valued thing on earth, and
may actually connote any substance whatever) he deliberately poisons it,
so to speak, bringing it to a stage of transmutation generally called
the Black Dragon, and he proceeds to work upon this virulent poison until
he obtains the perfection theoretically possible.
Incidentally, we have an almost precise parallel with this operation in
modern bacteriology. The apparently harmless bacilli of a disease are
cultivated until they become a thousand times more virulent than at
first, and it is from this culture that is prepared the vaccine which
is an efficacious remedy for all the possible ravages of that kind of
micro-organism.
Part of the Essay was excised here by Crowley himself.
We have been obliged to expose, perhaps at too considerable a length,
the main doctrines of the three Schools. The task, however tedious,
has been necessary in order to explain with reasonable lucidity their
connection with the world which their ideas direct; that is to say,
the nature of their political activities.
The Yellow School, in accordance with its doctrine of perfectly elastic
reaction and non-interference, holds itself, generally speaking, entirely
apart from all such questions. We can hardly imagine it sufficiently
interested in any events soever to react aggressively. It feels strong
enough to deal satisfactorily with anything that may turn up: and generally
speaking, it feels that any conceivable action on its part
would be likely to increase rather than to diminish the mischief.
It remains somewhat contemptuously aloof from the eternal conflict of
the Black School with the White ...
This is again totally incorrect: the Black School of Magick, the racial School, does not conflict
with the White School; and the White School happens, by the terms of the Apologue, to be
the "Black School" this Aeon. Crowley has deliberately led the discussion to the warfare between the White School
and the Black Lodge and the Black Brothers.
... At the same time, there is a certain
feeling among the Yellow adepts that should either of these Schools
become annihilated, the result might well be that the victor would
sooner or later turn his released energy against themselves.
Since the Black Lodge and the Black Brothers are essentially diseased, should they triumph
they would certainly spread infection all over the planet. But since for certain reasons this is impossible,
Crowley's description of the technique of the Yellow School is more imaginative than factual. Please notice
that the Schools intermingle and exchange knowledge at need and at random, and that the "Rosicrucians" just
described were a branch of the White School using Yellow School methods in their magickal operation. They were,
by the way, the most successful White School organization in known history since Ancient Egypt.
In accordance, therefore, with their general plan of non-action, as
expressed in the Tao Teh King, of dealing with mischief before it
has become too strong to be dangerous, they interfere gently from time to
time to redress the balance.
During the last two generations the Masters of the Yellow School have
been compelled to take notice of the progressive ruin of the White
adepts. Christianity, which possessed at least the semblance of a
White formula, is in the agonies of decomposition, even before it is
actually dead. Materialistic science has overwhelmed the faith and
hope of the Christians (they never possessed any charity to overwhelm)
with a demonstration of the sorrow, transitoriness and cruel futility
of the Universe. A vast wave of pessimism has engulfed the fortress
of Mansoul.
It was indeed a deadly blow to the adepts of the White School when
Science, their own familiar friend in whom they trusted, lifted up
his heel against them ...
All this is specious, all this part of the projected attack on Besant, Leadbeater and the
Toshosophists. Science was the weapon the Rosicrucians wielded to destroy the tyranny of the Roman Church, and
the stimulation of scientific thought has been the special province of the White School of
Magick for many centuries.
... It was in this conjuncture that the Yellow
adepts sent forth into the Western world a messenger, Helena Petrowna
Blavatsky, with the distinct mission to destroy, on the one hand, the
crude schools of Christianity, and, on the other, to eradicate the
materialism from Physical Science ...
This is totally incorrect. It is true that Blavatsky, like Crowley himself, went to Asia for
training, but she was a White Adept (read "Black...!"), and her work was obviously along the techniques and aims of
the White School. The main reason why Crowley states she was sent by the Yellow School is that Blavatsky claimed that
her Masters were Oriental: he is trying to dissociate Blavatsky and her Masters completely from what he calls the
"Black School," which, as we will soon see, means especially Besant and Leadbeater in this essay, with their gambit
of "Secret Masters."
Please notice that Besant and Leadbeater, although failing in their special con because of Crowley's intervention,
at least opened the door to any charlatan "maharishi" or "guruji" in the West. Put on a turban or a white robe,
cultivate meaningful references to the "Secrets of the Orient," and you can make a lot of money in the West,
especially in California, to this day.
... She made the necessary connection
with Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford, who were trying rather
helplessly to put the exoteric formulae of the White School into the
hands of students, and with the secret representatives of the Rosicrucian
Brotherhood. It is not for us in this place to estimate the
degree of success with which she carried out her embassy; but at
least we see today that Physical Science is at last penetrating to the
spiritual basis of material phenomena. The work of Henry Poincarè,
Einstein, Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell is sufficient evidence of this fact.
Christianity, too, has fallen into a lower degree of contempt than
ever. Realizing that it was moribund, it made a supreme and suicidal
effort, and plunged into the death-spasm of the first world-war. It
was too far corrupt to react to the injections of the White formula
which might have saved it ...
It has never been our intention to save it. On the contrary, this disease should run its course
and go the way of all such infamous rubbish. It is indeed a "black" page in the history of humankind. If it
depended on people like the Grants, McMurtrys and Regardies, it would happen all over again under another name.
... We see today that Christianity is more
bigoted, further divorced from reality, than ever. In some countries
it has again become a persecuting church.
In any country where Christism has acquired political and financial power, it has never ceased
to persecute, and wherever it may attain power, it will persecute. Hence the need to destroy it. If you will
pardon the pun, it has no saving graces.
With horrid glee the adepts of the Black School ...
Again we remind the reader that this has absolutely nothing to do with the real (racial)
Black School, and nothing to do with Hinduism or Buddhism except insofar as Besant and Leadbeater tried to use
those traditions for their own purposes and Crowley intervened. The terminology he has been using has been
deliberately misleading from the start.
... looked on at these
atrocious paroxysms. But it did more. It marshalled its forces
quietly, and prepared to clean up the debris of the battlefields. It
is at present (1924 e.v.) pledged to a supreme attempt to chase the
manly races from their spiritual halidom. (The spasm still - 1945 e.v. -
continues; note well the pro-German screams of Anglican Bishops, and
the intrigues of the Vatican.)
The Black School has always worked insidiously, by treachery. We need
then not be surprised by finding that its most notable representative
was the renegade follower of Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and that she was
charged by her Black masters with the mission of persuading the world
to accept for its Teacher a negroid Messiah ...
Get the point? Krishnamurti, of course, was a pure Aryan, and had no negro blood whatsoever. But
the essay was written to be read by the European equivalent of the Birch Society, the Moral Majority
and Ronald Reagan...
... To make
the humiliation more complete, a wretched creature was chosen who, to the most
loathsome moral qualities, added the most fatuous imbecility. And then
blew up!
Here, again Crowley himself excised material that had been in the original essay, dealing with
the Besant Leadbeater Krishnamurti imbroglio in greater detail. As we observed before, he could fight dirty with
the worst of them. He earned the lasting hatred of Besant and Leadbeater, and that section of the Theosophical
Society that remained under their influence is deadly hostile to Crowley to this day. They have consistently helped
the Vatican and the Zionists in their campaign of vilification of The Beast.
This, then, is the present state of the war of the Three Schools. We
cannot suppose that humanity is so entirely base as to accept Krishnamurti;
yet that such a scheme could ever have been conceived is a symptom of the
almost hopeless decadence of the White School ...
Here he added the following: "Note. This passage was written in 1924 e.v. The Master Therion
arose and smote him. What seemed a menace is now hardly even a memory."
... The
Black adepts boast openly that they have triumphed all along the line.
Their formula has attained the destruction of all positive qualities.
It is only one step to the stage when the annihilation of all life and
thought will appear as a fatal necessity. The materialism and vital
scepticism of the present time, its frenzied rush for pleasure in total
disregard of any idea of building for the future, testifies to a condition
of complete moral disorder, of abject spiritual anarchy.
The White School has thus been paralysed. We are reminded of the spider
described by Fabre ...
Jean Henri Fabre, respected French entomologist and man of letters, who wrote
"The Life of the Spider."
... who injects her victims with a poison which paralyzes
them without killing them, so that her own young may find fresh meat.
And this is what is going to happen in Europe and America unless some-
thing is done about it, and done in very short order.
The Yellow School could not remain impassive spectators of the abominations.
Madame Blavatsky was a mere forerunner. They, in conjunction with the Secret
Chiefs of the White School in Europe, Chiefs who had been compelled to suspend all
attempts at exoteric enlightenment by the general moral debility which had overtaken
the races from which they drew their adepts, have prepared a guide for mankind.
This man, of an extreme moral force and elevation, combined with a profound sense of
worldly realities, has stood forth in an attempt to save the White School, to
rehabilitate its formula, and to fling back from the bastions of moral freedom the
howling savages of pessimism. Unless his appeal is heard, unless there comes
a truly virile reaction against the creeping atrophy which is poisoning them, unless
they enlist to the last man under his standard, a great decisive battle will have been
lost.
This prophet of the White School, chosen by its Masters and his brethren,
to save the Theory and Practice, is armed with a sword far mightier than
Excalibur. He has been entrusted with a new Magical formula, one which
can be accepted by the whole human race. Its adoption will strengthen
the Yellow School by giving a more positive value to their Theory; while
leaving the postulates of the Black School intact, it will transcend them
and raise their Theory and Practice almost to the level of the Yellow ...
Once more we remind the reader that the "Black School" he refers to is merely Hinduism and Buddhism,
and that Hinduism is actually a branch of the White School (racially speaking), and Buddhism of the Yellow.
The Operation against Besant and Leadbeater is still on... And now he is, of course, beating his own drum.
... As to the White School, it will remove from them all taint of poison of
the Black, and restore vigour to their central formula of spiritual alchemy
by giving each man an independent ideal. It will put an end to
the moral castration involved in the assumption that each man, whatever
his nature, should deny himself to follow out a fantastic and impracticable
ideal of goodness. Incidentally, this formula will save Physical
Science itself by making negligible the despair of futility, the vital
scepticism which has emasculated it in the past. It shows that the joy
of existence is not in a goal, for that indeed is clearly unattainable,
but in the going itself.
This law is called the Law of Θελημα.
It is summarized in the four
words, "Do what thou wilt."
It should not be necessary to explain that a full appreciation of this
message is not to be obtained by a hasty examination. It is essential
to study it from every point of view, to analyse it with the keenest
philosophical acumen, and finally to apply it as a key for every problem,
internal and external, that exists. This key, applied with skill, will
open every lock.
From the deepest point of view, the greatest value of this formula is
that it affords, for the first time in history, a basis of reconciliation
between the three great Schools of Magick. It will tend to appease the
eternal conflict by understanding that each type of thought shall go on
its own way, develop its own proper qualities without seeking to inter-
fere with other formulae, however (superficially) opposed to its own.
What is true for every School is equally true for every individual.
Success in life, on the basis of the Law of Θελημα, implies severe
self-discipline. Each being must progress, as biology teaches, by
strict adaptation to the conditions of the organism. If, as the Black
School continually asserts, the cause of sorrow is desire, we can still
escape the conclusion by the Law of Θελημα. What is necessary is not
to seek after some fantastic ideal, utterly unsuited to our real needs,
but to discover the true nature of those needs, to fulfill them, and
rejoice therein.
This process is what is really meant by initiation; that is to say, the
going into oneself, and making one's peace, so to speak, with all the
forces that one finds there.
It is forbidden here to discuss the nature
of The Book of the Law, the Sacred Scripture of
Θελημα. Even after forty years of close expert
examination, it remains to a great extent mysterious; but the little
we know of it is enough to show that it is a sublime synthesis of all
Science and all ethics. It is by virtue of this Book that man may
attain a degree of freedom hitherto never suspected to be possible, a
spiritual development altogether beyond anything hitherto known; and,
what is really more to the point, a control of external nature which
will make the boasted achievements of the last century appear no more
than childish preliminaries to an incomparably mighty manhood.
All this is, of course, coming to pass. You will notice that he rewrote parts of the Essay to
adapt it to 1945 e.v., when he decided to make it part of this book.
It has been said by some that the Law of Θελημα appeals only to the
élite of humanity. No doubt here is this much in that assertion,
that only the highest can take full advantage of the extraordinary opportuni-
ties which it offers. At the same time, "the Law is for all."
Each in his degree, every man may learn to realise the nature of his own being,
and to develop it in freedom. It is by this means that the White School
of Magick can justify its past, redeem its present, and assure its future,
by guaranteeing to every human being a life of Liberty and of Love.
Such, then, are the words of Gérard Aumont. I should not like to
endorse every phrase ...
Not at this late date, anyway...
...; but the whole exposition is so masterly in its terse,
tense vigour, and so unrivalled by any other document at my disposal, that I
thought it best to let you have it in its own original form, with only
those few alterations which lapse of time has made necessary.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
P.S. Our own School unites the ruby red of Blood with the gold of the
Sun. It combines the best characteristics of the Yellow and the White
Schools. In the light of M. Aumont's exposition, it is easy to understand.
To us, every phenomenon is an Act of Love, every experience is necessary,
is a Sacrament, is a means of Growth. Hence, "...existence is pure joy;..."
(AL II 9) "A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!
A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!"
(AL II 42-43).
Let this soak in!
LETTER NINE: The Secret Chiefs
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Very glad I am, since at one time I was obliged to be starkly stern
about impertinent curiosity, to note that your wish to be informed about
the Secret Chiefs of the A∴A∴ is justified; it is most certainly of
the first importance that you and I should be quite clear in our minds
about Those under whose jurisdiction and tutelage we both work.
The question is beset with thickets of tough thorn; what is worse, the
path is so slippery that nothing is easier than to tumble head first
into the spikiest bush of them all.
You justly remind me that one of my earliest slogans was "Mystery is the
enemy of Truth;" how then is it what I acquiesce in the policy
of concealment in a matter so cardinal?
Perhaps the best plan is for me to set down the facts of the case, so
far as is possible, from them it may appear that no alternative policy
is feasible.
The first condition of membership of the A∴A∴ is that one is sworn
to identify one's own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher
levels, spiritually, and in every other way.
This is not explicit in the Oaths and Tasks of the lower grades, and has led to much confusion for
the selfish and petty so-called "aspirant," who comes to the Order merely to try to improve his or her own restricted
condition, imagined or otherwise. It is not for nothing that the Hierophant has a subtly sinister half-smile on his
face!
Accordingly, it stands to reason that those charged with the conduct of
the Order should be at least Masters of the Temple, or their judgment
would be worthless, and at least Magi (though not that particular kind
of Magus who brings the Word of a New Formula to the world every 2,000
years of so) or they would be unable to influence events on any scale
commensurate with the scope of the Work.
A∴A∴
Of what nature is this Power, this Authority, this Understanding, this
Wisdom—Will?
(I go up from Geburah to Chokmah.)
Of the passive side it is comparatively easy to form some idea; for the
qualities essential are mainly extensions of those that all of us possess
in some degree. And whether Understanding - Wisdom is "right"
or "wrong" must be largely a matter of opinion; often Time only can
decide such points.
But for the active side it is necessary to postulate the existence of a
form of Energy at their disposal which is able "to cause change to occur
in conformity with the Will"—one definition of "Magick."
Now this, as you know, is an exceedingly complex subject; its theory
is tortuous, and its practice encompassed with every kind of difficulty.
Is there no simple method?
Yes: the thaumaturgic engine disposes of a type of energy more adaptable
than Electricity itself, and both stronger and subtler than this, its
analogy in the world of profane science. One might say, that it
is electrical, or at least one of the elements in the "Ring-formula"
of modern Mathematical Physics.
In the R.R. et A.C., this is indicated to the Adept Minor by the title
conferred upon him on his initiation to that grade: Hodos Camelionis:—the
Path of the Chameleon. (This emphasizes the omnivalence of the force.) ...
Not so: it emphasizes the absolute need to disguise oneself by resembling one's environment:
the rule of the Rosicrucians was, and it might be supposed it still is, "to adopt the clothes and the customs of
the country one happens to be travelling in." It is pardonable in Crowley that he forgot this point, for His work
was not that of a "Rosicrucian;" His Work was not to conceal his light from the profane, but to become, in the silly
ritual parlance of Christism, the Light of the World. In other words, the Hanged Man.
... In the higher degrees of O.T.O.—the A∴A∴ is not fond of terms like this,
which verge on the picturesque—it is usually called "the Ophidian
Vibrations," thus laying special stress upon its serpentine strength,
subtlety, its control of life and death, and its power to insinuate itself into
any desired set of circumstances...
The reference is also, of course, to the Kundalini, the Serpent Power of the Hindu, Tantric and
Tibetan Schools. This symbol is universal: it is found in North, Central and South America, and in
Australasia as well.
It is of this universally powerful weapon that the Secret Chiefs must be
supposed to possess complete control.
Within limits. An athlete may press two hundred pounds or more while I can press only one
hundred; but the athlete might be crushed under a thousand. The analogy is bad, but it could be worse. The
important point is that the reader should keep in mind that the Secret Chief is not omnipotent or omniscient or
omnipresent except in relation to humankind. They can be wrong, and they can fail, at least relatively speaking;
although on a much higher level of discourse than preachers, politicians, bureaucrats and millionaires.
They can induce a girl to embroider a tapestry, or initiate a political
movement to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly
beyond the purview or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest
thinkers.
(It should go without saying that the adroit use of these vibrations
enables one to perform all the classical "miracles.")
Again, within limits. But most of the classical 'miracles,' the 'gospel' ones especially, where
genuine, can be performed by even minor thaumaturges.
These powers are stupendous: they seem almost beyond imagination to
conceive.
The following Latin lines and subsuquent paragraph were cut out in Mr. Regardie's edition.
"Hic ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono;
Imperium sine fine dedi."
As Vergil, that mighty seer and magician of Rome at her perihelion says
in his First Book of the Aenead. (Vergil whose every line is also an
Oracle, the leaves of his book more sacred, more significant, more sure
than those of the Cumaean Sibyl!)
Crowley shared, naturally enough, Levi's admiration for Virgil, to say nothing of Dante's.
The lines mean roughly: "Since I neither a deadline nor a purpose set to things, I give infinite empery."
These powers move in dimensions of time and space quite other than those
with which we are familiar. Their values are incomprehensible to us.
To a Secret Chief, wielding this weapon, "The nice conduct of a clouded
cane" might be infinitely more important than a war, famine and pestilence
such as might exterminate a third part of the race, to promote whose welfare
is the crux of His oath, and the sole reason of His existence!
But who are They?
Since They are "invisible" and "inaccessible," may They not merely be
figments invented by a self-styled "Master," not quite sure of himself, to prop
his tottering Authority?
Well, the "invisible" and "inaccessible" criticism may equally
be leveled at Captain A. and Admiral B. of the Naval Intelligence Department.
These "Secret Chiefs" keep in the dark for precisely the same reasons;
and these qualities disappear instantaneously the moment They want to get
hold of you.
It is written, moreover, "Let my servants be few & secret: they shall
rule the many & the known." (AL I 10)
But are They then men, in the usual sense of the word? They may be
incarnate or discarnate: it is a matter of Their convenience.
Have They attained Their position by passing through all the grades of the A∴A∴?
Yes and no: the system which was given to me to put forward is only
one of many. "Above the Abyss" all these technical wrinkles
are ironed out. One man whom I suspect of being a Secret Chief has hardly
any acquaintance with the technique of our system at all. That he accepts
The Book of the Law is almost his only link with my work. That, and
his use of the Ophidian Vibrations: I don't know which of us is better at it,
but I am sure that he must be a very long way ahead of me if he is one of Them.
You have already in these pages and elsewhere in my writings examples
numerous and varied of the way in which They work. The list is far
from complete. The matters of Ab—ul—Diz and of Amalantrah show one
method of communication; then there is the way of direct "inspiration,"
as in the case of "Hermes Eimi" in New Orleans.
Again, They may send an ordinary living man, whether one of Themselves
or no I cannot feel sure, to instruct me in some task, or to set me
right when I have erred. Then there have been messages conveyed by
natural objects, animate or inanimate ...
Here he added the note: "One thing I regard from my own experience as certain: when you call,
They come. The circumstances usually show that the call had been foreseen, and preparations made to answer it, long before
it was made. But I suppose in some way the call has to justify the making. "
This is not necessarily so. They may choose the path of least resistance to convey a message, following the Way of
the Dao; and if you try to trace the logical sequence of events preceding the occasion, you may draw the conclusion
that They had foreseen the demand a long time before it was vibrated, when They merely channeled a little of an
existing force towards you, and then immediately ceased to impinge on the Continuum more than necessary for
your — Their — purposes. In the same way I can use a river for transportation; the river was created by geological
upheavals perhaps ten million years ago or more; am I to state that it was created merely for the purpose of my
crossing it to reach a destination that may not live longer than a moment? It is correct, however, that usually
They won't answer unless you ask. You must cultivate the Noble Art of Guru-bullying, but with all due caution.
Woe if you ask for help when you are just too lazy or too conceited to fight your own battles! In such cases, it
is better not to call attention to yourself. Which, after all, is what is meant by Hodos Chamelionis! It cuts both
ways. As Crowley himself says, when you really need help, you get it — as a rule, if it serves Their purposes.
And you often were not aware that you needed the help before it comes. In my experience, it is very seldom that
you get help when it does not directly serve Their purposes; for one; Their resources are not infinite; for
another, why should They care what happens to you? But sometimes they are amused by you, or fond of you, or
entertained by your antics. It is useless - and even dangerous — to try to contrive such responses. They may
be amused by insincerity, but only when it is very subtle or very clumsy — and They do not feel obligated
to "reward" it! in fact, They feel obligated by nothing except Their own purposes. This is my experience, which
is of course partial and limited, so don't take it for eternal Truth.
... Needless to say, the outstanding example in my life is the whole Plan of
Campaign concerning The Book of the Law. But is Aiwaz a man
(presumably a Persian or Assyrian) and a "Secret Chief," or is
He an "angel" in the sense that Gabriel is an angel? Is Ab-ul-Diz
an Adept who can project himself into the aura of some woman with whom I happen
to be living, although she has no previous experience of the kind, or any interest
in such matters at all? Or is He a being whose existence is altogether
beyond this plane, only adopting human appearance and faculties in order to make Himself
sensible and intelligible to that woman?
I have never attempted to pursue any such enquiry. It was not forbidden;
and yet I felt that it was! I always insisted, of course, on the strictest
proof that He actually possessed the authority claimed by Him! But
I felt is improper to assume any other initiative. Just a point of good
manners, perhaps?
Good manners are always a helpful quality; in a sense, they mean awareness of the existence of,
and respect for, other stars. The following paragraph was excised by Mr. Regardie, perhaps because it states
clearly that
a) Crowley was totally humble towards his superiors and
b) Crowley could make contact with Them at
any time if an emergency arose, which, as everybody knows, the Zionists seem unable to do with Moses, or Jehovah,
or whoever.
You ask whether, contact once made, I am able to renew it should I so
wish. Again, yes and no. But the real answer is that no such gesture
on my part can ever be necessary. For one thing, the "Chief" is so far
above me that I can rely on Him to take the necessary steps, whenever contact would
be useful; for another, there is one path always open which is perfectly sufficient
for all possible contingencies.
Elsewhere I will explain why they picked out so woebegone a ragamuffin
as myself to proclaim the Word of the Aeon, and do all the chores appurtenant to that particular Work.
The Burden is heavier as the years go by; but—Perdurabo.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
P.S. Reading this typescript over for "literals," it struck me that you
would ask, very reasonably: "But if the Secret Masters have these boundless
powers, why do They allow you to be plagued by printers, held up for lack of
secretaries, worried by all sorts of practical problems? . . . Why,
in a word, does anything ever go wrong?"
There are several lines of reply; coalescing, they suffice:
1. What is "wrong?" Since four wars is Their idea of "right,"
you may well ask by what standard you may judge events.
2. Their Work is creative; They operate on the dull mass of unrealized
possibilities. Thus they meet, firstly, the opposition of Inertia;
secondly, the recoil, the reaction, the rebound.
3. Things theoretically feasible are practically impossible when
(a)
desirable though their accomplishment may be, it is not the one feat
essential to the particular Work in hand and the moment;
(b) the sum
total of available energy being used up by that special task, there is
none available for side-issues;
(c) the opposition, passive or active,
is too strong, temporarily, to overcome.
More largely, one cannot judge how a plan is progressing when one has
no precise idea what it is. A soldier is told to "attack;" he may
be intended to win through, to cover a general retreat, or to gain time by
deliberate sacrifice. Only the Commander in Chief knows what the order
means, or why he issues it; and even he does not know the issue, or
whether it will display and justify his military skill and judgment.
Our business is solely to obey orders: our responsibility ends when we
have satisfied ourselves that they emanate from a source which has the
right to command.
P.P.S. A visitor's story has just reminded me of the possibility that
I am a Secret Chief myself without knowing it: for I have sometimes
been recognized by other people as having acted as such, though I was
not aware of the fact at the time.
Which proves nothing; he might have been Overshadowed. But if he was not a Secret Chief then,
He is a Secret Chief now.
LETTER TEN: The Scolex School
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You actually want to know how to distinguish gold from
copper pyrites —"fool's
gold" they called it in '49 California...
She had asked him how she would be able to distinguish between the Secret Chiefs he had just
described and the bogus 'Secret Masters' so widely advertised in the yellow press. "'49" does not mean 1949 e.v.,
but 1849 e.v., the date when the so-called 'Gold Rush started in the United States of America.
...- no! I wasn't there ...
She had probably been pestering him about his recent incarnations. Please remember that these
letters were not edited in the order in which they were written, and that lots of them were not written to the same
person, of whatever sex.
... - or "absolute"
alcohol and—Liqueur Whisky from "alki" (commercial alcohol—see Jack London's
The Princess, a magnificent story—don't miss it!) and Wartime Scotch as sold in most British
pubs in 1944, era vulgari.
One pretty good plan is to take a masterpiece, pick out a page at random,
translate it into French or German or whatever language you like best,
walk around your chair three times (so as to forget the English) and then
translate it back again.
You will gather a useful impression of the value of the masterpiece by
noticing the kind of difficulty that arises in the work of translation;
more, by observing the effect produced on you by reading over the result;
and finally, by estimating the re-translation; has the effect of the
original been enhanced by the work done on it? Has it become more lucid?
Has it actually given you the information which it purported to do?
(I am giving you credit for very unusual ability; this test is not easy
to make; and, obviously, you may have spoilt the whole composition,
especially where its value depends on its form rather than on its substance.
But we are not considering poetry, or poetic prose; all we want is intelligible
meaning.)
It does not follow that a passage is nonsensical because you fail to
understand it; it may simply be too hard for you. When Bertrand Russell
writes "We say that a function R is 'ultimately Q-convergent α' if
there is a member y of the converse domain of R and the field of Q such
that the value of the function for the argument y and for any argument
to which y has the relation Q is a member of α." Do we?
But you do not doubt that if you were to learn the meaning of all these
unfamiliar terms, you would be able to follow his thought.
Now take a paragraph from an "occult teacher."
What's more, I'll give you wheat, not tares; it seems terrifyingly easy
for sound instruction to degenerate in to a "pi-jaw." Here goes!
"To don Nirmanakaya's humble robe is to forego eternal bliss for
self, to help on man's salvation. To reach Nirvana's bliss but to
renounce it, is the supreme, the final step—the highest on
Renunciation's Path."
Well, not quite, unless you are fool enough to believe that Nirvana is the 'ne plus ultra' of
spiritual states; and you don't believe that unless you are a talking monkey and nothing else, any more than you
believe that 'nothing can exceed the speed of light.'
Follows a common-sense comment by Frater O.M.
The quotation is from Crowley's edition of Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence and The Seven
Portals, commented by himself. This book, also, will be reissued by us.
All this about Gautama Buddha having renounced Nirvana is apparently
all a pure invention of Mme. Blavatsky, and has no authority in the
Buddhist canon ...
In short, Blavatsky was lying, just as Crowley lied in his "The Three Schools of Magick;" which,
since they were both members of the White ("Black") School, may give you a good
idea of Our character, or lack of it!
... The Buddha is referred to, again and again, as having
'passed away by that kind of passing away which leaves nothing whatever
behind.' The account of his doing this is given in the
Mahaparinibbana Sutta; and it was the contention of the Toshophists
that this 'great, sublime Nibbana story' was something peculiar to
Gautama Buddha. They began to talk about Parinibbana, super-Nibbana,
as if there were some way of subtracting one from one which would
leave a higher, superior kind of a nothing, or as if there were some
way of blowing out a candle which would leave Moses in a much more
Egyptian darkness than we ever supposed when we were children.
This is not science. This is not business. This is American Sunday
journalism. The Hindu and the American are very much alike in
this innocence, this 'naiveté' which demands fairy stories with ever
bigger giants. They cannot bear the idea of anything being complete
and done with. So, they are always talking in superlatives, and are
hard put to it when the facts catch up with them, and they have to
invent new superlatives. Instead of saying that there are bricks of
various sizes, and specifying those sizes, they have a brick and a
super-brick, and 'one' brick, and 'some' brick; and when they have
got to the end they chase through the dictionary for some other
epithet to brick, which shall excite the sense of wonder at the
magnificent progress and super-progress—I present the American
public with this word—which is supposed to have been made. Probably
the whole thing is a bluff without a single fact behind it. Almost
the whole of the Hindu psychology is an example of this kind of
journalism. They are not content with the supreme God. The other
man wishes to show off by having a supremer God than that, and when
a third man comes along and finds them disputing, it is up to him to
invent a supremest super-God.
It is simply ridiculous to try to add to the definition of Nibbana
by this invention of Parinibbana, and only talkers busy themselves
with these fantastic speculations. The serious student minds his
own business, which is the business in hand. The President of a
Corporation does not pay his bookkeeper to make a statement of the
countless billions of profit to be made in some future year. It
requires no great ability to string a row of zeros after a significant
figure until the ink runs out. What is wanted is the actual
balance of the week.
The reader is most strongly urged not to permit himself to indulge
in fantastic flights of thought, which are the poison of the mind,
because they represent an attempt to run away from reality, a dispersion
of energy and a corruption of moral strength. His business
is, firstly, to know himself; secondly, to order and control himself;
thirdly, to develop himself on sound organic lines little by
little. The rest is only leather and prunella.
Meaning, empty talk or "hot air."
There is, however, a sense in which the service of humanity is
necessary to the completeness of the Adept. He is not to fly away
too far.
Some remarks on this course are given in the note to the next verse.
The student is also advised to take note of the conditions of membership
of the A∴A∴
(Equinox III (1), Supplement pp. 57 - 59).
So much for the green tree; now for the dry!
We come down to the average popular "teacher," the mere humbug. Read this:—
"One day quite soon an entirely different kind of electricity will
be discovered which will bring as many profound changes into human
living as the first type did. This new electricity will move in a
finer ether than does our familiar kind, and thus will be nearer in
vibration to the fifth dimension, to the innermost source of things,
that realm of 'withinness' wherein all is held poised by a colossal
force, that same force which is packed within the atom. Electricity
number two will be unthinkably more powerful than our present electricity
number one." (V.S. Alder, The Fifth Dimension, p. 132)
This thoroughly silly book has recently been reprinted; naturally, by Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Exhausted; I must restring my bow.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER ELEVEN: Woolly Pomposities of the Pious "Teacher"
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
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.
To put the matter in a nutshell, tersely, concisely, succinctly, the
world is being corrupted by all this ---
| Asthmatic Thinking | Torpid Thinking | Nauseous Thinking |
| Bovine T | Uncertain T. | Old-maidish T. |
| Chawbacon T. | Venomous T. | Purgative T. |
| Diffuse T. | Whelp T. | Querulous T. |
| Excretory T | Yahoo T. | Rat-riddled T. |
| Fog-bound T. | Zig-zag T. | Superficial T. |
| Gossiping T. | Ambivalent T. | Tinsel T. |
| Higgledy-piggledy T. | Broken T. | Unbalanced T. |
| Ill-mannered T. | Corked T. | Viscous T. |
| Jibbing T. | Disjointed T. | Windy T. |
| Kneeling T. | Eight-anna T. | Yapping T. |
| Leaden T. | Flibberty-gibbet T. | Zymotic T. |
| Moulting T. | Glum T. | Addled T. |
| Neurotic T. | High-falutin' T. | Blear-eyed T. |
| Orphan T. | Invertebrate T. | Capsized T. |
| Peccable T. | Jazzy T. | Down-at-heel T. |
| Queasy T. | Knavish T. | Evasive T. |
| Rococo T. | Leucorrhoeic T. | Formless T. |
| Slavish T. | Motheaten T. | Guilty T. |
| Hypocritical T. | Unsystematic T. | Lachrymose T. |
| Ignorant T. | Void T. | Maudlin T. |
| Jerry-built T. | Waggly T. | Neighing T. |
| Knock-kneed T. | Atrophied T. | Odious T. |
| Lazy T. | Bloated T. | Pedestrian T. |
| Messy T. | Cancerous T. | Quavering T. |
| Nasty T. | Dull T. | Ragbag T. |
| Oleaginous T. | Eurasian T. | Sappy T. |
| Purulent T. | Futile T. | Tuberculous T. |
| Slattern T. | Immature T. | Veneered T. |
| Unkempt T. | Beige T. | Woolly T. |
| Over-civilized T. | Emaciated T. | Flat T. |
| Gluey T. | Dislocated T. | Emetic T. |
| Crippled T. | Slushy T. | Insanitary T. |
| Foggy T. | Teaparty T. | Gloomy T. |
| Wordy T. | Negroid T. | Jaundiced T. |
| Opportunish T. | Babbling T. | Pedantic T. |
| Muddy T. | Onanistic T. | Flatulent T. |
| Unclean T. | Hybrid T. | Sluttish T. |
| Flabby T. | Nebulous T. | Stale T. |
| Unsorted T. | Hurried T. | Mangy T. |
| Prim T. | Empty T. | Portentous T. |
| Theatrical T. | Vain T. | Loose T. |
| Vaporous T. | Loose T. | Wooden T. |
| Myopic T. | Bloodless T. | Soapy T. |
| Flimsy T. | Ersatz T. | Gabbling T. |
| Unfinished T. | Pontifical T. | Wishful T. |
| Mongrel T. | Unripe T. | Frock-coated T. |
| Irrelevant T. | Glossy T. | Fashionable T. |
| Hidebound T. | Officious T. | Unmanly T. |
| Snobbish T. | Misleading T. | Slippery T. |
In the original edition Mr. Karl Germer, the editor, added this note: "In the original Manuscript
the list of adjectives contains about 1,000 words; a small selection only has been used."
Mr. Regardie, incidentally, in his "edition" of this book, failed to acknowledge that the footnotes, when not
by Crowley, were by Karl Johannes Germer; possibly because this would make his piracy and theft the more blatant;
also, possibly, because he wanted to enrich his reputation at the expense of a better man's mind and character.
The secretary who took dictation was not, of course, by this time Mr. Regardie, who had fled with holy awe from the
wicked man he would later try to rob, as we have seen. Nay, the secretary was another future thief, Kenneth Grant.
The adjectives followed each other without pause: Crowley described the kind of "thinking" he meant with a thousand
different words, none of which by the way, were the traditional four-letter ones, although he knew plenty of those
as well. The point of the exercise is explained in the text itself. One cannot help wondering what Mr. Grant — who,
if anything, is intellectually as lazy as he is morally - thought of the whole thing while he had to put it down.
It must have taken at least half an hour.
... as we find in Brunton, Besant, Clymer,
Max Heindl, Ouspensky and in the catchpenny frauds of the
secret-peddlers, the U.B., the O.H.M., the A.M.O.R.C.,
and all the other gangs of self-styled Rosicrucians; they should be hissed off the stage.
These lines of verse were excised Mr. Regardie. Perhaps the reference to Australia reminded
him of a much better man than himself, Frank Bennet, and irked him.
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!"
One of the many popular war-marches of the time. Please remember that World War II was still on.
So much for Buckingham!
Buckingham Palace, traditional living space of the British "royal" family.
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 + b2 + 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."
This paragraph was excised by Mr. Regardie.
(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 ...
He is referring to the thousand definitions of the kind of "thinking" one gets from the
Besants, Leadbeaters, Regardies, Grants, McMurtrys, etc., etc.
... 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.
The following paragraph was also excised by Mr. Regardie
Millions, yes: billions probably: but there is a limit.
He means, to the number of memories you can retain in your brain and coordinate with each other.
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.
You will notice that the "realists," as they called themselves, were indeed the "idealists" to
end all "idealists," and the fact that they were able to call themselves by a term that meant exactly the opposite
of what they were explains Crowley's thousand adjectives and reminds one of the "democracy" of Reagan and the
"morality" of Falwell, to say nothing of the "feminism" of Schlafly and the "Christianity" of the Popes. Shall
one add the "compassion" of the Zionists...? Of course, if you were going to brazen it out then, being a monk helped.
It still does, in backward countries like Ireland and the United States.
All à priori thinking, the worst kind of thinking, goes with "realism"
in this sense.
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!)
Rather, to confuse him more completely, one would - if you will pardon the word - think.
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 ...
In astrological parlance, the Sun and the Moon.
..., 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 e.v., 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.")
He means in Russell's The Principles of Mathematics, which is perhaps Russell's masterpiece.
But very likely he would not have been able to write it without his previous work on Principia Mathematica with
Alfred North Whitehead, who has already been mentioned by Crowley. Whitehead was another giant intellect, a
philosopher and a mathematician, but unlike Russell he did more teaching than writing, which is the reason why he
is less known.
Enough, more than enough, of this: let us return to the relative value
of various types of thought.
The above lines were excised from Mr. Regardie's "edition" of this book.
But it is well known that he does not approve of accounting, or of Bertrand Russell, or of nominalism, or of Crowley.
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 responsible for the observed
phenomena ...
Meaning that she drank too much.
... —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!
The example is a gentle joke with her, but the method isn't.
Until you have practiced this method, all day and every day, for quite
a long while, you cannot tell how amazingly your mnemonic power ...
Meaning the power of your memory. We assume, of course, that the majority of our readers are
products of Progressive Education, and need these little hints.
... 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...
Here he added the following note: "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."
...; 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.
Considering what he said about the Buddha in the essay on the "Three Schools," you might think
he was contradicting himself if you had not known what he was trying to do there, and what he is trying to do here.
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!
The following seven paragraphs were excised by Mr. Regardie from his "edition". Perhaps he
considered them superfluous, or perhaps he considered them too informative. With that kind of "intellect", who
can tell?
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!
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.
You may remember that she had asked him how to differentiate a real Teacher from a false; and
he has told her to learn to think straight, and she will realize that truth fits together, while a lie does not.
He also told her, of course, to have the courage to face truth. This is not the kind of advice likely to put a lot
of money in the Teacher's pockets: it demands too much effort, too much attention, and too much courage from
"pupils"! There is even a side—effect of such frankness that, to a superficial thinking, may seem incomprehensible:
when the Teacher tells unpleasant truths to some kinds of people, the immediately decide that the Teacher is either
a liar or incompetent. (Sometimes they will at once set out in search of the kind of false teacher Crowley has been
at such pains to describe!) It is always easier to blame someone else for one's own shortcomings, either innate or
of training. But it is a deadly course for the would—be initiate.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER TWELVE: 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 ...
This refers to several previous letters. Unfortunately or not, these Letters were not
edited in the order in which they were written. Crowley put this one here because he had just spoken of the Secret
Chiefs, then of false teachers. He probably thought the sequence would be more orderly this way. The reader may
miss his correspondents' letters, the ones that awakened these responses; but if they were as mine to my
own instructor, you haven't missed much.
... 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?
Crowley should have made it clear from the beginning that this "left"-"right" nomenclature is
totally inadequate. Indeed, it was introduced by the Toshosophists under the influence of homosexual Hindu "masters".
I don't mean that a homosexual cannot be a Master; but a Master who is homosexual will not condemn or hate or restrict
the 'straights,' while the average homosexual will be just as biased as the average 'straight'.
This term was introduced by Hindu faggots pretending to be Gurus, and referred simply to the Tantrists, who not
only used women in magickal rituals but — horror of horrors! — admitted women to their mysteries, initiated them, and
considered some of them to be Masters themselves. Vivekananda's Master, Ramakrishna, had a woman as his instructor;
one does not consider that Vivekananda was lacking because of that. "Left-hand Path" meant the left spinal cord
channel, the Ida; and "Right-hand Path" meant the right spinal chord channel, the Pingala. The so-called 'Teachers'
who introduced the nomenclature considered that if a man went to bed with another man they would both cultivate the
Positive, or Solar Current, which runs through Pingala, while if a man went to bed with a woman he would cultivate
the Negative, or Lunar Current, which runs through Ida. However, it so happens that the polarity is reversed in the
female: the Solar current runs through Ida, and the Lunar current through Pingala! So here, you see, we have the kind
of situation that would delight medieval theologians in search of a human barbecue. The Tantrists — those infamous
heterosexuals! — were skillfully slandered by Besant and Leadbeater's faggotty "gurus," who wanted no competition,
and especially no competition from people vile enough to go to bed with women. Hence, in the West, the connotation
of "Brother of the Left-hand Path" with "Evil". In the Orient, and especially among true Hindu Initiates, of course
there is no such connotation. As a matter of fact, they laugh themselves sick at the Toshosophists and con—men
like the "Paramahamsa Yogananda" and others of the same ilk. The use of the expression "Black Brother" is, again,
extremely unfortunate. It is interesting to notice that one expression comes from the dichotomy of the imperfect
European. Evil not only is relative, but in both these cases there is not even any real harm involved, merely
prejudice. So please try to understand that when Crowley uses this unfortunate nomenclature he is neither
disparaging heterosexuals nor indicting blacks. As he put it himself, the nomenclature is unfortunate, but it
was not he who invented it. We surely must find some better term, for the "Black Brother", or "Brother of the
Left-hand Path", in the sense of the imperfect initiate who refuses the Crossing of the Abyss, exists and, from
the point of view of the Masters of the Temple, is insane in Buddhi, which is a condition that is not detectable
by the average psychiatrist!
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.
These paragraphs were excised by Mr. Regardie in his "edition", for reasons better known to himself.
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....
Multiplication and division are simply accelerated forms of each!
...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."
He is here referring to the Nazi delusion that they were the Aryans, blond, beautiful and
just - which is to say, fair on all three counts... like the Popes in two at least. There were only blond
Jesuses hanging from crosses in Roman Catholic churches in Germany during Nazism!
The next paragraph was excised by Mr. Regardie, with the result, in his "edition" that the reader
gets the impression that Crowley's woman pupil was protesting against his critique of Nazism. But since the Zionists
were trying to associate us to Nazism for quite some time, perhaps Mr. Regardie wanted to help them in their campaign
of slander. Note the sequence:
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 ...
Here again Mr. Regardie excised, for reasons of his own, from the next line until the end of the
following paragraph, "...might still be ruling France."
... 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 ...
A fashionable upper-class quarter of Paris before the French Revolution.
... -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 ...
The reference is to The Vision and the Voice.
...: 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.
"Dope" here is used in the sense of unhealthy stimulation, and 'it' refers to the
inecological self-preservation effort.
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 20" 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 important 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 ...
But a much more succinct explanation is available to the serious student in
Liber Trigrammaton, q.v.
...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 —— ...
Here he added the note: "I suppose only a Magus could have heard this word."
But the word was 'folly': he used the antithesis as the subtitle of Liber Aleph:
"The Book of Wisdom or Folly." The point is that the folly must be 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 ...
Cf. The Book of the Law III 42.
... 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.)
Here he added the following note: "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."
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. 11th Æthyr.)
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
LETTER THIRTEEN: 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 ...
I've had some of those myself.
... 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.
The details of this 'Pilgrim's Progress' are very fully set forth in
"One Star in Sight "; and I should indeed be stupid and presumptuous to
try to do better than that. But it is true that with regard to the
O.T.O. there is no similar manual of instruction. In the Manifesto,
and other Official Pronunciamenti, there are, it is true, what ought to
be adequate data; but I quite understand that they are not as ordered
and classified as one would wish; there is certainly room for a simple
elementary account of the origins of the Order, of its principles, of
its methods, of its design, of the Virtue of its successive Grades.
This I will now try to supply, at least in a brief outline.
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?
- The Ego is attracted to the Solar System.
- The Child experiences Birth.
- The Man experiences Life.
- He experiences Death.
- He experiences the World beyond Death.
- This entire cycle of Point-Events is withdrawn into Annihilation.
In the O.T.O. these successive stages are represented as follows:—
| 1 | 0° | (Minerval) |
| 2 | I° | (Initiation) |
| 3 | II° | (Consecration) |
| 4 | III° | (Devotion) |
| 5 | IV° | (Perfection, or Exaltation) |
| 6 | P.I. | (Perfect Initiate) |
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
II°, 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.
Mr. Israel Regardie, in his "edition, " cut off the preceding three paragraphs, obviously because
they make it very clear that Crowley would never have condoned the publication of the O.T.O. rituals done by thieves
with whom Mr. Regardie always was in contact and whom Mr. Regardie encouraged, abetted, and - as we can plainly
see - imitated. Furthermore, some of Crowley's remarks in those paragraphs must have hit Mr. Regardie too close to
the flesh to be comfortable.
The Rituals of the O.T.O. have been changed, of course, and will never again be made public by thieves.
It is interesting to note that in his piracy Mr. Francis "King " did not include the Rituals
above the VI°, stating
that there are "no rituals for those Grades." Of course there are; they simply did not fall into his thieving hands
because those who delivered the rituals to this butchery never had them, having no right to the Grades. Since these
are the only O.T.O. Rituals that were not exposed, they have been kept, by decision of the O.H.O.
The pirated rituals are being used, as it was intended by the thieves who published them, by totally unworthy
individuals in several countries. Those rituals are no longer valid, and persons undergoing 'initiation' under
them are requested to write to us immediately, informing us of this infringement on the rights and name of the O.T.O.
Persons authorized to represent the O.T.O. will always be able to exhibit patents. But since many have been expelled
for dishonesty or laxity, it is possible that patents are being exhibited that are no longer valid. For instance,
a member who has not paid dues for more than three months is automatically out of the Order. People interested in
legitimate O.T.O. contact are advised to always check with us the claims of any individuals whatsoever before they
trust either their purse or their mind to them. In civilized countries, if necessary the attention of the police
will be brought to bear on false claimants.
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!
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
One should perhaps remark here that the secret to which he refers is not in the least easy to
profane, although it can be misinterpreted, and often is, even by those who have access to it by lawful means but are
unprepared to bear the weight of the responsibilities it brings to the Initiate's life. Even in it were openly
published, it would be extremely hard for a profane to use it; as to those who, like Regardie, Grant, Yorke,
McMurtry, forswore their Oaths and Obligations, and those who stole that to which they had no right, they have
invariably found that they cannot avail themselves of it at all. Indeed, I have on occasion imparted it to people
who had no real right to it, out of misguided compassion or an error of judgment; I have always noticed that within
months, sometimes a few days, they had totally forgotten it, or were totally unable to understand what
it was all about, no matter how many patient and repeated explanations, and even demonstrations, might be tried on
their behalf. There is a lion in the way.
LETTER 14: 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).
The references are to the original edition. This enormously important book will soon be
re-issued by the O.T.O.
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!
He is facetiously imitating the language of so-called Jingoism, coined to describe the
patriotic and imperialist themes of poems by Rudyard Kipling, who was detested by the British leftists,
mis-called 'liberals.'
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.)
In his books.
I once had a most wholesome lesson: how diffuse and therefore unnecessary
is much of even our most would-be-compressed speech.
I had been charged by my Superior with the reconstruction of a certain
ritual. This was in 1912 e.v.; already the tempo of the world had
speeded up mercilessly; to get people to learn even short passages by heart
would be no easy job. So, warned by the prolix, pious, priggish and
platitudinous horrors of Freemasonry (especially the advanced degrees
of the Scottish and Egyptian Rites), I resolved to cut the cackle and
come to the 'osses in the most drastic manner of which I was capable.
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.
This paragraph was cut out in Mr. Regardie's piracy, Crowley not only was fortunate enough to have
known three, perhaps four, of the world's best talkers; he was one himself. What he means by the art of conversation
can be dimly captured in the dialogue of some of Oscar Wilde's comedies of manners; "The Importance of Being Earnest,"
for instance. The magazine Punch published, some years ago, a very interesting article by a writer who had known
Crowley personally during the days of his "fame," had once lunched with him and Louis Wilkinson and spent two
fascinated and unforgettable hours listening to the repartee.
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?
The following two paragraphs were excised by Mr. Regardie in his "version" of this book;
considering the kind of
people who must awaken his sympathies, the omission is understandable, if not pardonable.
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-suffocationg 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!
It is to the point to remind the reader that two years ago there was in the United States
a television program that weekly aired social problems and asked the audience to comment; the comments were counted,
and a statistical table of them shown at the start of the next program in the following week. It began to become
clear that the overwhelming majority of the audience was too liberal and in favor of things that the Establishment
fears: sexual freedom, legalization of drug use (though not of drug abuse - but how can you ascertain the difference
when use is underground?), abortion, voluntary euthanasia, responsible government, honest police,
efficient bureaucrats... The program was taken off the air under the excuse that it did not do well in the ratings.
It had seven million viewers at the time.
So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! ...
In England, the expression 'public schools' is misleading: these are private schools to which only
the children of the upper classes were sent, like the famous Eton.
... 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.
It may not be generally known that the real motive why the United States entered the Viet Nam war was
that certain international business cartels were interested in the mineral wealth of that country.
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, 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?
He means Winston Churchill.
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.
The Nazis. The country was at war, remember.
On this note of hope I will back to my silence.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
The "hope" was short-lived; after the war the Socialists took over, as foreseen by Crowley, and
reduced England to the shambles it now is.
LETTER 15: Sex Morality (INCLUDES ARTEMIS IOTA)
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.
- 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.
- 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.
As with all pioneers, Crowley was a bit confused about his aims.
When he said 'moral aspects', he was thinking in terms of abstract morality based on obsolete religious
codes. But this entire letter and Artemis Iota itself, are a sermon on morality. Thelemic Morality.
A morality that is practical and actual, based on scientific findings.
- 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!
This paragraph was excised in Mr. Regardie's piracy, and its absence, along with the absence of
another two paragraphs further on, makes Crowley's thought in this letter totally unintelligible to the reader.
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 ...
You can and should, however, achieve conscious control of the technique of execution; and this
is what he is talking about.
..., 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.
These following two paragraphs were also excised in Mr. Regardie's piracy:
"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.
As the reader will realize, the absence of these paragraphs makes nonsense of the whole letter.
Mr. Regardie's problem was that, like most whores who call themselves analysts, he is not in the business of helping
people find their True Will, but in the business of fitting round pegs into square holes, no matter of what cost to
the fittees. His purpose was to make smooth the running of a society conceived merely to put money in the pockets of
people who already had too much money to start with.
Please notice that this is not meant as a criticism of capitalism as a system. The communist world is just as full
of Regardies as the United States of America, busily fitting round pegs into square holes to keep the Party
hierarchy "safe". Moral cowardice by itself is despicable enough; but moral cowardice combined with personal and
public dishonesty is really beyond comment. We cannot find words to describe Mr. Regardie's lack of character.
Perhaps this feat on his part, and the others that went before and follow it, will describe it better than we could.
Always pretending to want to "help Crowley", Mr. Regardie has done his best — meaning his worst — to castrate the
man's thought and stand between it and the reader, like an Old Testament scarecrow, draped in the rags of Mosaic
dogma, stuck in the field of the human mind.
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 ...
He refers to woman, not to Binah, in what follows. It should be pondered, however, that in
what pertains to mystical or magical training this problem may affect both sexes.
..., 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.
This paragraph was also excised, perhaps because Mr. Regardie thought it might seem insulting to
female readers; perhaps because it reminded him of the famous episode of the Golden Calf. If Mr. Regardie's
motive was the former, it is interesting that he should show such concern not to offend women, when by his previous
censorship of this Letter he had already deprived them - and men as well! — from the deep knowledge of one's sexual
impulses that Crowley had been trying to impart. But Mr. Regardie's main trouble in life always was the kind of
shallowness of thought and action that springs from fear of facing the limitations of one's own self.
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
ARTEMIS IOTA
vel
De coitu
Scholla Triviae
"Dianae sumus in dife Puellae et pueri integri
Dianam pueri integri Puellaque canamus."
Catullus
The quoted verses might be translated into English this way: "We chaste boys and girls are in the care of Diana;
we chaste boys and girls together praise Diana."
Please notice that the emphasis is Crowley's, and is meant to be
significant to the reader. He considered this tract on sexual morality extremely important to women; yet very much
dependent on right conduct by men. Diana is the Roman form of the Goddess Artemis, the Goddess of Chastity. The
tract, therefore, treats of Initiatic Chastity, which has absolutely nothing to do with Christist, Jewish, Brahmin,
Moslem, Buddhist or even Marxist concepts of the sort. Observe the difference between the word for "chastity" in the
Classical Latin, the root of which is integer - with its sense of whole, of wholesomeness - and the word for
"chastity" in Christist Latin (which has been the standard imposed by torture and genocide for fifteen hundred years),
derived from "castus," which means walled up, enclosed, restricted. "Integri" meant integral,
complete, with no part,
function or member lacking by nature: working as a harmonious whole. An integrated psychosoma might be a very
accurate translation in modern psychoanalytical jargon.
Artemis Iota is required reading for Hermits of Θελημα of both sexes; for Initiates
of the Inner and Secret
Circles of the O.T.O.; for A∴A∴ Aspirants; and for any human being interested in living a sane and
civilized
existence. Perhaps some day it will be required reading in school curricula in this world; if ever it is, this
world will be much closer to "Paradise" than it is now.
Try to understand that you are not just supposed to read and study this, you are supposed to practice it.
Moral courage, personal integrity and — believe it or not — rigorous self-denial are sine qua non conditions for its
practice. You will find that the tenets here expressed are essential to physical and emotional, to say nothing of
moral, health; and you will also find that these tenets are savagely hated and fought against in all the codes of the
past Aeon. The laws of the country where you may live, reader — and your country may be anywhere in this world, and
follow any political statute soever — were made to curtail the activities that here you find stated to be not only the
right but the duty of every living being, humans included. Those statutes are deadly to the human soul: they
must be fought against and changed at any cost if our species is to progress to the net turn of the evolutionary
helix. And since much of what you must do will be painful to your ego, those statutes will take advantage of your
egoic hangups to try to put you on their side. You must be always on your guard not to fall into this trap.
Mr. Regardie did, unhappy wretch!
Read! Think! Be brave! And act! For intentions that are not sealed by
deeds are worthless. And harmful to you and the species.
The Word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will; O lover, if thou wilt,
depart. There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it
to the aeons!
(AL I 41)
The references, unless otherwise stated, are to Liber AL vel Legis, the Table of Commandments of
this Aeon.
Consent or refusal are to be determined by the impulse itself, without reference to any
other motives such as commonly influence action.
This means simply what it says. If you are married, you are not to bed your wife or husband
unless you feel like it. If you are married, and want to bed a man or woman other than your mate, you are to do
so without letting the fact that you are married come into the matter. There is no sensible reason why it should.
Marriage is a social contract, not a set of chains. Chastity belts are out. Naturally, this will seem very pleasant
to you when you are the one "indulging your base nature," but when it is your wife, or husband, or person-friend,
you will probably be tempted to tut—tut. Don't. And if you sulk, try to not do it in the other
person's (or persons') presence. It will be very hard to act human at first, but eventually you will be able to
rise above the level of Christist quadrupeds. And you will feel the difference at last. If you survive.
So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do they will.
(AL I 42)
Every thought, word or act without exception is subject to this Law.
"Do what thou wilt" does not give license to do anything else; lest this be not understood, the doctrine is
here explicit: "Thou hast not right but to do thy will."
Jealous screams do not manifest your will: rather, the lack of it. Jealous sobs are no better.
Grow up!
Every particle of energy must be built into this single-track machine of will; directly or
indirectly, it must serve the one purpose. A very small hole in the hull may sink a very large ship.
Every act, therefore, with the thoughts and words which determine its
performance, is a sacrament.
A sacrament is something that marks you, and creates you. So, if you are a Regardie
carefully censoring Crowley, this creates you. If you play the martyr or the tyrant to restrict your mate's
sexual yearning for someone else, this creates you. You create yourself daily by your deeds. Try to create yourself
a human being, rather than a troglodyte! And beware, for a human who denies either his or her own soul, or restricts
the soul of others, becomes something lower and more dangerous than the beasts.
Now, of all acts the most intrinsically important is the act of love.
Firstly, because the ecstasy which accompanies its due performance is a physical image, or hint, of the
state of Samadhi, since the consciousness of the Ego is temporarily in abeyance; secondly, because its normal
effect on the material plane is, or may be, incalculably vast. (The emphasis upon the word due is absolute.)
Precisely because it is so powerful a weapon, it use is hedged in with manifold precautions, and its abuse deprecated
in injunctions heavily charged with menace:
Also, take your will and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.
(AL I 51)
Like the scorpion, the sting is on the tail: "But always unto me" means, without restricting the
will of anybody, or even any living being, at all. If, or instance, you decide to fuck a dog — a real dog, you know,
four—legged, not a politician or a Moral Majority leader of a TV "evangelist" — you better make damn sure the animal
has no negative reactions to the occasion. (If you love dogs, you will be able to notice if it wants to fuck you,
or be fucked by you, or not; and if you don't love dogs, what are you doing fucking one, anyway? Try to remember
that violating an animal is even worse than raping a human being. The human may react, may even kill you; the animal
is helpless in the hands of a more intelligent, supposedly higher—evolved being.)
If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many;
if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!
(AL I 52)
This shall regenerate the world, the little world my sister, my heart and my tongue, unto whom
I send this kiss.
(AL I 53)
The "little world my sister" is the Planet Earth - our planet, in case you hadn't noticed; and
if you practice Artemis Iota to the letter, you will contribute to the regeneration of Mother Earth, the Mother of
us all who live on it, but just one "little sister" to the Being who was speaking.
...But ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me! To me!
Ibid.
Please notice carefully the juxtaposition of the quoted verses. We shall return to this after
quoting them as they were put by Crowley, and in the order they were put in by Crowley.
... Ye shall gather goods and store of women and Spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed
the nations of the earth in Splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy.
(AL I 61)
There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the
pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries;
veil not your vices in virtuous words; these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you
here and hereafter.
(AL II 52)
This paragraph is directed to either heterosexual men or homosexual women with a penchant
for the "active role."; the paragraph just above this note is directed to women of any sexual persuasion whatsoever.
There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Than canst thou bear more joy.
Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed
by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!
(AL II 70)
But exceed! exceed!
(AL II 71)
Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine - and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! - death
is the crown of all.
(AL II 72)
Here is confirmation in detail of AL I, 41. This act is a definite electric or magnetic
phenomenon. No other considerations apply. (It will therefore occasionally seem, to an outsider, unreasonable.)...
Remember that the outsider may be you! Control of one's ego is paramount; also, control at one's
pain at seeing an object of love find joy in some other being's embrace, for we have been taught for generations
that 'infidelity' in our lover is 'sinful' and, what is worse, diminishes our self-importance. Whoever follows
the precepts of Artemis Iota is swimming against the current of hundreds of thousands of years of conditioning, for
those "moral codes" are not really moral at all: they are social expressions of animal instincts pretending to be
human under the guise of "divine authority". 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,' for instance, sounds very
fine; but did anybody ask the wife's opinion? They used to stone "adulteresses" to death, you may recall.
All this hypocrisy and double-standard has to go. You must make a conscious effort to destroy it, no matter how
painful it may be to you. Or to others!
... The only exception - it is only apparently so - is when satisfaction of the impulse would
manifestly thwart the True Will more than it would help to fulfill it; any such case must be judged on its merits.
"But always unto Me". The word always admits of no exception; "unto Me" may be
paraphrased as
the "fulfillment of one possibility necessary to the achievement of the Great Work"...
This is a specialized interpretation, for those undergoing training in an Initiatic Order.
A paraphrase useful to the average human being might be "but always according to the will of all parties involved
in the act;" or, "but with no harm to the Eco-system."
Every act is a sacrament, but this pre-eminently so. The text continues with a plain threat:
"if the ritual be not ever unto me, then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit." To profane this
sacrament of
sacraments is the most fatal of errors and offences, for it is high treason to the Great Work itself.
The next verse repeats: "If the ritual be not ever unto me;" and it is emphasized and
fortified
with a threat. The offender is no longer in free enjoyment of the caresses of the Goddess of Love; he is cast out in
to the penal constraint of the merciless and terrible God of Chapter III.
He means chapter III of The Book of the Law.
"...Be goodly therefore; dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines
that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where..."
This refers to the technique of the art; it will be explained later in this essay.
"...and with whom ye will."
This repeats what has been said already above in the notes to AL I 41.
Verse 53 asserts the importance of this dogma. Neglect of these prescriptions has been responsible
for the endless and intolerable agonies, the hideous and unmitigable disasters of the past.
The Qabalist may note that "To me!" at the end of this verse not only repeats the adjuration,
but is a Magical Seal set upon the dogma. (Verse 54 is a hint to seek the secret.)
In Greek letters, TO MH adds to 418; it is identical with Abrahadabra, the cipher of the
Great Work. Meditation should lead the student to considerations even deeper and more fruitfull.
Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love;
for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet,
hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.
(AL I, 57.)
Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious langour, force and
fire are of us.
(AL II 20)
I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with
drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof!
They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie.
Be strong, O man! lust, and enjoy all things of sense and rapture: feat not that any God shall deny thee for this.
(AL II, 22.)
Straight to the point. This verse quoted is again partly warning, partly admonition, and
should be ample explanation of why this tract is required reading for Hermits of Θελημα.
Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there are also of my friends who be hermits.
Now think not to find them in the forest or on the mountain; but in beds of purple, caressed by magnificent beasts
of women with large limbs, and fire and light in their eyes, and masses of flaming hair about them; there shall ye
find them.
(AL II 24)
But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!
Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy and beauty!
There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.
A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride!
A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.
A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet - secret, O Prophet!
A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods.
A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death!
A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!
A feast every night unto Nuit, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!
Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal
ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.
(AL II 34-44)
These verses refer once more to the concomitants of the act; they indicate the adjuvants to
the technique; and they indicate the spirit in which it should be approached. The detached scientific attitude
of enquiry and preparation is preliminary; the object is to foresee hindrances, to facilitate and to direct the current;
but the impulse itself is Enthusiasm.
The next quoted verses are put together especially for the woman reader. One of them has already
been quoted; but he repeats it, because of its importance.
There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, &
the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in
virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter.
(AL II 52)
Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels: for her sake let all chaste women be utterly despised among you.
Also for beauty's sake and love's.
(AL III 55-56)
The student should assimilate the doctrine of the "Black Bothers" ...
Here Mr. Germer added a note to the original edition: "See Letter 12 of this book."
To refuse to fulfill any of one's possibilities is the direct negation of the Great Work.
It should be remarked in passing, for the benefit of the average woman reader, that the feminist
movement is under constant and insidious attack from the "Mary" syndrome. We find supposedly feminist groups
trying
to ban pornography and even girlie photos in magazines, without taking the trouble to find out whether the women who
participate in those enterprises enjoy them, and want to participate in them, or are compelled by force to do so, which
seems unlikely. Until before World War I women who worked in any capacity other than a housewife were looked upon with
suspicious of being "immoral," "fast," or "loose." By the definition of the cults of the
Slave-gods, of course they were.
Sexual freedom is not only a right of any woman, it is also a pleasure. Feminism is not hatred of men, an unfortunate
by-product of it, is being used to influence feminists as a whole to avoid the male, or sexual activity with the male,
except in terms that, if you look carefully upon them, differ from the old standards only because of a reversal of
roles. In short, feminists are supposed to be "chaste," and men are supposed not to want a woman as
a "sex object."
So what is wrong about wanting someone as a sex object? I have often been looked upon as a sex object, happily
sometimes by women, and I enjoyed the proceedings in bed well enough, with no strings attached. The emphasis on not
being regarded as "sex objects" is merely another attempt of the enemy to lead women back into servitude.
It is very
natural that a woman should not want to be regarded only as a sex object; but if this happens with a man whom you find
sexy enough for one night, but not a man you would want to spend your entire existence with, so what? Unfortunately,
this subject is too complex to go into at length here. Feminists should beware of any tendencies to restrict their
sexual life out of "respect" for artificial standards of "dignity," or abstract concepts of what
being a feminist is.
A feminist certainly wants to do more than fuck; but unless fucking is included in your program, sisters, and fucking
with men at that, I will tend to suspect your motives. Crowley next repeats several other verses, this time to emphasize
sexual technique.
There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy.
Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed
by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!
But exceed! exceed!
Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine - and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! - death is the
crown of all.
(AL II 70-72)
Here, in a few simple phrases, is a complete guide — in skeleton — to the Art of Love.
Genius without technique is often clumsy and unintelligible; but technique without genius is dry bones.
Genius is there, or is not there; nor wit nor work avail if it be absent. Yet one may maintain that it is always
there, since "Every man and every woman is a star." In any case only technique responds to study and exercise;
it
has been written that it "demands as much study as theology, and as much practice as billiards." All one can do
is
(a) to unleash,
(b) to direct, the latent genius. In countries hostile to civilization,
("horribilesque ultimosque Brittanos"), and their colonies ...
The Latin phrase means here: "Britain the most horrible of all." But from what one reads,
even in their
own propaganda, it seems that Soviet Russia and Red China are not far behind.
..., past and present ...
That got the good old U.S.A. into it, boys and girls. And Australia. And Canada. And New Zealand.
And Ireland. And ...
..., the technique is almost non-existent; individuals who possess it in any degree of perfection owe
their pre-eminence, in almost every case, to tuition and training under the natives of happier and less barbaric parts
of the world. Each type of race or culture has its own special virtues.
A. Study: The student should study, bear in mind, and take to heart, such classics as the Ananga-Ranga,
the Bagh-i-Muattar of Abdullah el Haji ...
Cf. Equinox V 4, subtitled Sex and Religion, for this.
..., the Kama Shastra, the Kama Sutra, the Scented Garden of the Sheik Nefzawi, and certain
scientific or pseudo-scientific treatises (usually upon the deformities of nature, or the abuses of ignorance) by
numerous authors, mostly French, German, Austrian or Italian. "Energized Enthusiasm," EQ. I, 9, is of
palmary virtue.
(Liber LXVI, Liber CCCLXX, Liber DCCCXXXI, Liber CLXXV, Liber LCVI and others, also in The Equinox, are official
publications of the A∴A∴) There are also various classics of the subject, helpful to assimilate the
romantic and
enthusiastic atmosphere proper to the practice of the Art; one may instance Catullus, Juvenal
(specially the Sixth Satire), Martial, Petronius Arbiter, Apuleius, Bocaccio, Masucci, Francois Rabelais, de Balzac
(Contes Drolatiques), de Sade (Justine, Juliette, et al.), Andre de Nerciat, Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand
(Gamiani; ou Deux nuits d'exces), Sacher Masoch (Venus in Furs), with the English and American too numerous to list,
but notably the poets in Holy Orders: Swift, Sterne, Herrick, Donne, and Herbert.
There is also a complete literature of mysticism which approaches or implies this matter;
but this type of work is, for the younger student, as dangerous as it is superficially attractive. It encourages
the sense of guilt, teaches the venomous art of self-exculpation, and extols that very hypocrisy which Freedom notably
condemns.
"Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries."
(AL II 52)
B. Practice: No one teacher, however gifted, can possibly cover one hundredth part of the groundwork of this Art.
The best tuition is that of trained and consecrated experts; next, that of men and women of natural genius.
C. Original Research: This should be based upon the broadest possible knowledge, and the deepest understanding of
the same; and upon the results of the scope and intensity of one's practice.
But exceed! exceed!
(AL II 71)
But always unto Me.
(AL I 51)
LETTER 16: On Concentration
Cara Soror:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You wisely ask me for a special letter on Concentration; you point out
that I have implied it constantly, but never given plain instruction.
This paragraph was cut out by Mr. Regardie, probably as part of the Zionist campaign to give
the public the impression that Crowley admired the Nazis, if not the "Prophet" Samuel.
It hope I have not been so vague as to allow you to suppose that Concentration
Camps are evidence that benevolent and enlightened governments are at last
seriously concerned to educate the world to Yoga; but I do agree that it
cannot do great harm if I take a dose of my own medicine, and gather into
one golden sheaf all the ripe corn of my wisdom on this subject.
For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of
every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all
the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in
this matter. All the subsidiary work—awareness, one-pointedness, mind-
fullness and the rest—is intended to train you to this.
All the greetings, salutations, "Saying Will," periodical adorations, even
saying Apo pantos kakodaimonos with a downward and outward sweep of the
arm, the eyes averted, when one sees a person dressed in a religious (Christian)
uniform: all these come under "Don't stroke the cat the wrong way!" or,
in the modern pseudo-scientific journalese jargon "streamlining life."
Again this next paragraph was cut out by Mr. Regardie, perhaps because he thought Crowley
was promoting himself — Mr. Regardie probably feels that he holds a monopoly on this.
Let us see if Frater Perdurabo has anything to the point! Of course,
Part I of Book 4 is devoted to it; but there is too much, and not enough,
to be useful to us just now.
One should perhaps explain, for the benefit of people slightly more perceptive than Mr. Regardie,
that Crowley in his old age felt as alien to "Frater Perdurabo" as he would have felt as a boy. In his
old age,
Crowley was a Master of the Temple AND a Magus AND an Ipsissimus: the subsets of his Being were distant, often
quaint, curiosities to him. Mr. Regardie was never able to perceive this, because Mr. Regardie was never able to
analyse himself into his constituent parts; he did not have any.
What your really need is the official Instruction in The Equinox, and the
very fullest and deepest understanding of Eight Lectures on Yoga; but
these lectures are so infernally interesting that when I look into the
book for something to quote, it carries me away with it. I can't put it
down, I forget all about this letter. Rather a back-handed advertisement
for Concentration!
The best way is the hardest; to forget all this and start from the beginning
as if there had never been anything on the subject written before.
I must keep always in mind that you are assumed to know nothing whatever
about Yoga and Magick, or anything else beyond what the average educated
person may be assumed to have been taught.
What is the problem? There are two.
β: To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy,
with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and
with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is Magick.
α: To stop the mind altogether. That is Yoga.
The rules, strangely enough, are identical in both cases; at least, until
your "Magick" is perfect; Yoga merely goes on a step further. In Beta
you have reduced all movements from many to One; in Alpha you reduce that
One to Zero.
Now then, with a sigh of relief, know you this: that every possible incident
in the Beta training is mutatis mutandis, perfectly familiar to the engineer.
The material must be chosen and prepared in the kind and in the manner,
best suited to the design of the intended machine; the various parts
must be put together with the utmost precision; every obstacle to the
function must be removed, and every source of error eliminated. Now cheer
up, child! In the case of a machine that he has devised and constructed
himself with every condition in his favour, he thinks he is doing not too
badly if he gets some fifteen or twenty per cent of the calculated efficiency
out of the instrument; and even Nature, with millions of years to adjust and
improve, very often cannot boast of having done much better.
So you have no reason to be discouraged if success does not smile upon you
in the first week or so of your Work, starting as you do with material of
whose properties you are miserably ignorant, with means pitifully limited,
with Laws of Nature which you do not understand; in fact, with almost
everything against you but indomitable Will and unconquerable courage.
This paragraph, again, was cut out by Mr. Israel Regardie, presumably because the poets quoted
were not popular with the intelligentsia in his days; and Mr. Regardie brown—nosed the intelligentsia as much as
he could.
(I know I'm a poor contemptible Lowbrow; but I refuse to be ashamed for
finding Kipling's "If" and Henley's Don't remember—the title; they may not
be poetry ...
This was the contention of the Bloomsbury intelligentsia, most of it pseudo-liberal and socialist.
I have never read Henley, but Kipling's "If" is poetry of a kind that its critics themselves could never have
achieved. Applied to Crowley's own life, it shows that he was a Man, while Mr. Regardie was a pseudo-magician,
a pseudo-psychoanalyst and now also, as we can see, a pseudo-Crowley. One wonders if he had ambitions of becoming
a pseudo-Thelemite?
...; but they are honest food and damned good beer for the plebeian
wayfarer. It was such manhood, not the left-wing high-brow Bloomsbury
sissies, that kept London through the blitz. Pray forgive the digression!)
But it is not really a digression at all. Kipling's poem describes exactly the kind of
vicissitudes that anyone who takes up self-development of the depth and scope of Initiation may expect from life
and his or her fellowpersons, and I suppose that Henley's does something similar. Incidentally, during World War II,
Kipling's "If" was found framed in the office or home of the great majority of working Britons. This,
of course,
does not include the intelligentsia, who never work anywhere, just play. The poet had been in disgrace for several
years already, and it is interesting that he should have surfaced, in this one poem at least, despite the loud
complaints of the critics, at one of the most difficult times in the history of England. After the conflict, the
intelligentsia again managed to banish him from the minds of his countrymen, with the beautiful results that are
so evident at the present time and which Crowley, incidentally, had foreseen in his prophetic poem, Carmen Saeculare,
decades before:
The harlot that men called great Babylon,
In crimson raiment and in smooth attire,
The scarlet leprosy that shamed the sun,
The gilded goat that piled the world for hire; -
Her days of wealth and majesty are done:
Men trample her for mire!
The temple of the God is broken down;
Yes, Mammon's shine is cleansed! The house of her
That cowed the world with her malignant frown,
And drove the Celt to exile and despair,
Is battered now — God's fire destroys the town;
London admits God's air.
This was written forty-five years before London was razed by the Nazi raids.
(One may protest that the Nazis were hardly God - but either everything is God, or nothing is.) Interestingly
enough, a note to this poem reads: "Crowley, an Irishman, was passionately attached to the Celtic movement,
and
only abandoned it when found that it was a mere mask for the hideous features of Roman Catholicism."
The poem was written in 1900 e.v., published with the note in 1905 e.v. He wasn't fooled for
very long, was he? Yet, many Irishmen support the I.R.A. to this day, in spite of its characteristically Roman
Catholic brutality and cruelty, only to be compared to the Zionist blood thirst in Palestine. One might remark
here that the majority of the Nazi sympathizers and many of the party itself were devout Roman Catholics, and
that the Vatican abetted the killing of the Jews in Germany as long as it publicly could. What some Roman
Catholic clergymen are reported to have done to help, they did of their own initiative, not on orders from Rome.
There is only one method to adopt in such circumstances as those of the
Aspirant to Magick and Yoga: the method of Science. Trial and error.
You must observe. That implies, first of all, that you must learn to observe.
And you must record your observations. No circumstance of life is, or can be
irrelevant. "He that is not with me is against me." ...
This direct quotation from the "Gosp
