Confessions of Aleister Crowley

360 has been ruined by the expedients which at present buttress her artificial system of centralization and standardization. At the moment, Spain was deeply exercised with the matter of base coinage. It appears that a certain cabinet minister had a brother in Mexico who eked out a precarious livelihood by exporting brass bedsteads. The calibre of the uprights was such that silver pesos could be neatly packed therein, and the influence of the minister prevented the custom house being surprised at the weight. These silver pesos were of the same quality as those from the government mint; and at the then price of silver, there was over one hundred per cent profit on each coin put into circulation. It was quite impossible to distinguish the good money from the bad, except that the coiners had thoughtlessly struck one dollar of Amadeo II, who lived so long ago that his coins should have been more worn than these were. As we approached Madrid we found the people increasingly suspicious and unwilling to accept our pesos, and in the last hundred kilometres of so it was extremely difficult to get them to take our money at all and, therefore, to get food or shelter. But when we came to the city itself, instead of the nuisance reaching a climax, we found that it disappeared altogether. The {580} Madrilenes were not going to worry their heads as to whether money was good or bad. It doesn't matter, they argued, so long as we agree to take it, and all the desperate efforts of the government to call in the bad coinage fell flat. Forgive the digression! We were at Burgo de Osma and the fiesta was in full swing. I enjoyed every minute heartily. For the first time I was able to see a bull-fight without the accretions of snobbishness when the famous matador steps forth to exhibit his skill in the presence of royalty, and the game is not a game but an excuse for servility and intrigue. It was all the difference between house football at a public school and a cup final. I was able to understand the direct appeal which the sport makes to the primitive passions. There was no excitement and no disgust for me. I had reached a spiritual stage in which Sanna --- pure perception --- had ousted Vedana --- sensation --- I had learnt to look on the world without being affected by events. I was able to observe what went on as few people can, for the average man's senses are deceived by his emotions. He gets things out of proportion and he exaggerates them even when he is able to appreciate them at all. I made up my mind that it should be an essential part of my system of initiation to force my pupils to be familiar with just those things which excite or upset them, until they have acquired the power of perceiving them accurately without interference from the emotions. It is all a branch of the art of concentration, no doubt; but it is one which has been very much neglected, and it is of supreme importance when the aspirant arrives at the higher levels, where it is a question of "making no difference between any one thing and any other thing", and uniting oneself with each and every possible idea. For as long as anything soever escapes assimilation there remains separateness and duality, or the potentiality of such. Evil can only be destroyed by "love under will"; and so long as it is feared and hated, so long as we insist on attributing a real and irreconcilable existence to it, so long will it remain evil for us. The same of course applies to what we call "good". Good is itself evil in so far as it is separate from other ideas. Through this course of initiation I was brought into great happiness. I was able to perceive a fact which I had never guessed: that blood on the shoulder of a bull in the Spanish summer sunlight is the most beautiful colour that exists. In the whole of my memories I had only one fact to set against it; the green of a certain lizard which ran across my path on a hillside in Mexico. It is, in fact, very rare to see pure colours in nature; they are nearly always mixed or toned down. But when they do appear they are overwhelming. {581} 64