The Law is for All

174 The Law is for All It is we of Thelema who truly love and respect Woman, who hold Her sinless and shameless even as we are; and those who say that we despise Her are those who shrink from the flash of our falchions1 as we strike from Her limbs their foul fetters. 1 [A broad, curved mediaeval sword.] Do we call Woman Whore? Ay, Verily and Amen, She is that; the air shudders and burns as we shout it, exulting and eager. O ye! Was not this your sneer, your vile Whisper that scorned Her and shamed Her? Was not “Whore” the truth of Her, the title of terror that you gave Her in your fear of Her, coward comfort­ ing coward with furtive glance and gesture? But we fear Her not; we cry Whore, as Her armies approach us. We beat on our shields with our swords. Earth echoes the clamour! Is there doubt of the victory? Your hordes of cringing slaves, afraid of themselves, afraid of their own slaves, hostile, despised and distrusted, your only tacticians the ostrich, the opossum, and the cuttie, will you not break and flee at our first onset, as with levelled lances of lust we ride at the charge, with our allies, the Whores whom we love and acclaim, free friends by our sides in the Battle of Life? The Book of the Law is the Charter of Woman; the Word Thelema has opened the lock of Her “girdle of chastity.” Your Sphinx of stone has come to life; to know, to will, to dare and to keep silence. Yea, I, The Beast, my Scarlet Whore bestriding me, naked and crowned, drunk on Her golden Cup of Fornication, boasting Her­ self my bedfellow, have trodden Her in the Market place, and roared this Word that every woman is a star. And with that Word is uttered Woman’s Freedom; the fools and fribbles and flirts have heard my voice. The fox in woman hath heard the Lion in man; fear, fainting, flabbiness, frivolity, falsehood—these are no more the mode. In vain will bully and brute and braggart man, priest, lawyer, or social censor knit his brows to devise him a new tamer’s trick;