Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 4)

the foot of a cliff; but the easiest way — also the speediest, most direct, least obstructed, the way of minimum effort—would be simply to jump. I should hâve destroyed my will in the act of fulfilling it, or what I mistook for it; for the true will has no goal ; its nature being to Go. Similarly a paraboia is bound by one law which fixes its relations with two straight lines at every point ; yet it has no end short of infinity, and it continually changes its direc¬ tion. The initiate who is aware Who he is can always check his conduct by reference to the déterminants of his curve, and calculate his past, his future, his bearings and his proper course at any assigned moment 5 he can even comprehend himself as a simple idea. He may attain to measure fellow-parabolas, ellipses that cross his path, hyperbolas that span ail space with their twin wings. Perhaps he may corne at long last, leaping beyond the limits of his own law, to conceive that sublimely stupendous outrage to Reason, the Cône! Utterly inscrutable to him, he is yet well aware that he exists in the nature thereof, that he is necessary thereto, that he is ordered thereby, and that therefrom he is sprung, frcm the loins of so fearful a Father! His own infinity becomes zéro in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly exists at ail. Trillions multiplied by trillions of trillions of such as he coula not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some mysterious power. Yet breadth is equally a nothing in the presence of the Cône. His first conception must evidently be a frantic spasm, formless, insane, not to be classed as articulate thought. Yet, if he develops the faculties of his mind, the more he knows of it the more he sees that its nature is identical with his own whenever comparison is possible. The True Will is thus both determined by its équations, and free because those équations are simply its own name, spelt out fully. His sense of being under bondage cornes from his inability to read it; his sense that evil exists to thwart him arises when he begms to learn to read, reads wrong, and is obstinate that his error is an improvement. We know one thing only. Absolute existence, absolute motion, absolute direction, absolute simultaneity, absolute truth, ail such — 342 —