Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 4)

and is the child of Set-Isis as their Logos or Word uttered by their “Angel”. The card is XX, and 20 is the value of Yod (the Angel or Herald) expressed in full as IVD. S h is the Spiritual congress of Heaven and Earth. But T is the Holy Spirit in action as a “roaring lion” or as the uold Serpent” instead of as an “Angel of Light”. The twins of Set-Isis, harlot and beast, are busy with that sodomitic and incestuous lust which is the traditional formula for producing demi-gods, as m the cases of Mary and the Dove; Leda and the Swan, etc. The card is XI, the number of Magick AVD : Aleph the Fool impregnating the woman according to the Word of Yod, the Angel of the Lord ! His sister has seduced her brother Beast, shaming the Sun with her sin; she has mastered the Lion and enchanted the Serpent. Nature is outraged by Magick ; man is bestialized and woman defiled. The conj miction produces a monster; it, affirms régression of types. Instead of a man-God conceived of the Spirit of God by a virgin in innocence, we are asked to adore the bastard of a whore and a brute, begotten in shamefullest sin and born in most blasphemous bliss. This is in fact the formula of our Magick ; we insist that ail acts must be equal; that existence asserts the right to exist ; that uniess evil is a mere term expressing some relation of haphazard hostility between forces equally self-justihed, the universe is as inexplicable and impossible as uncompensated action 5 that the orgies of Bacchus and Pan are no less sacramental than the Masses of Jésus 3 that the scars of syphilis are sacrecl and worthy of honour as such. It should be unnecessary to insist that the above ideas apply only to the Absolute. Toothache is still painful, and deceit degrading, to a man, relatively to his situation in the world of illusion ; he does his Will by avoiding them. But the existence of aEvil” is fatal to philosophy so long as it is supposed to be independent of conditions ; and to accustom the mind “to make no différence” between any two ideas as such is to emancipate it from the thralldom of terror. We affirm on our altars our faith in ourselves and our wills, our love of ail aspects of the Absolute Ail. — 338