Konx Om Pax

DEDICATION AND COUNTER-DEDICATION ix case of the hands quoted above. If they were not similar, they would no longer be contradictories, but contraries. People who begin to think for themselves usually fall into the error of contradicting normal ideas as taught by their seniors. Thus, one learns that marriage is right and adultery wrong. One thinks, and finds the beauty of the latter, the sordidity of the former; perhaps ending, with a little wit, in defending marriage because the delights of adultery are impossible without it. This attitude is good enough, indeed, while one is talking to the grovellers; but what educates the clergy (since miracles still happen) is a truism to an actress. We must go further, and perceive both sides of the question; then will open to us that world where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, of which the great enemy of his age’s morality has so eloquently spoken. If in the jungle two elephants fight lustily, he shall do little who champions either; rather snare both, tame both, ride both, as the charioteer of the Tarot with the opposing sphinxes, black and white. Nor, 0 man, believe thou that finality is anywhere to be reached in words. I balance A and not-A (a), and finding both false, both true, transcend with B. But whatever B is, it is as false and true as b ; we reach C. So from C to c, and for ever. Not, as Hegel thought, until we reach an idea in which no seed of self-contradiction lurks; for that can never be. The thinkable is false, then? (once more!) _Yea, but equally it is true. So also the old mystics were right who saw in every phenomenon a dog-faced demon apt only to seduce the soul from the sacred mystery; right, too, they who “interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with the soul.” Yet the latter is the higher formula; the narrowing of the Magical Circle to a point is an easier task than the destruction of that circle (and all both within and without) by the inrush of a higher dimension.