Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 4)

Crime, folly, sickness and ail such phenomena must be contem- plated with complété freedom from fear, aversion, or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelli- gentlyj in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them. Anatomists and physiologists, grappling in the dark with death, hâve won hygiene, surgery, prophylaxis and the rest for mankind. Anthropologists, archaeologists, physicists and other men of science, risking thumbscrew, stake, infamy and ostracism, hâve torn the spider-snare of superstition to shreds and broken in pièces the monstrous idol of Morality, the murderous Moloch which has made mankind its méat throughout history. Each fragment of that coprolite is manifest as an image of some brute lust, some torpid dullness, some ignorant instinct, or some furtive fear shapen in his own savage mind. Man is indeed not wholly freed, even now. He is still trampled under the hoofs of the stampeding mules that nightmare bore to his wild ass, his Creative forces that he had not mastered, the stérile ghosts that he called gods. Their mystery cows men still j they fear, they flinch, they dare not face the phantoms. Still, too, the fallen fetich seems awfulj it is frightful to them that there is no longer an idol to adore with anthems, and to appease with the flesh of their firstborn. Each scrambles in the bloody mire of the floor to snatch some scrap for a relie, that he may bow down to it and serve it. So, even to-day, a mass of maggots swarm heaving over the carrion earth, a brotherhood bound by blind greed for rottenness. Science still hésitâtes to raze the temple of Rimmon, though every year finds more of her sons impatient of Naaman’s prudence. The Privy Council of the Kingdom of Mansoul sits in permanent secret session j it dares not déclaré what must follow its deed in shattering the monarch morality into scraps of crumbling conglomerate of climatic, tribal, and personal préjudices, corrupted yet more by the action of crafty ambition, insane impulse, ignorant arrogance, superstitious hysteria, fear fashioning falsehoods on the stone that it sets on the grave of Truth whom it has murdered and buried in the black earth Oblivion. Moral philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, mental pathology, physiology, and many another of 340 —