Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

Law, these methods may be advantageously combined ; en the one hand infinité frankness and readiness to communicate ail secrets ; on the other the sublime and terrible knowledge that ail real secrets are incommunicable. 1 It is, according to tradition, a certain advantage in conjurations to employ more than one language. In ail probability the reason of this is that any change spurs the flagging attention. A man engaged in intense mental labour will frequently stop and walk up and down the room — one may suppose for this cause — but it is a sign of weakness that this should be necessary. For the; beginner in Magick, however, it is permissible 2 to employ any device to secure the resuit. Conjurations should be recited, not readj 3 4 and the entire ceremony should be so perfectly performed that one is hardly conscious of any effort of memory. The ceremony should be constructed with such logical fatality that a mistake is im¬ possible/ The conscious ego of the Magician is to be destroyed to be absorbed in that of the God whom he invokes, and the process should not interfère with the automaton who is performing the ceremony. But this ego of which it is here spoken is the true ultimate ego. The automaton should possess will, energy, intelligence, reason, and resource. This automaton should be the perfect man far more 1. If this were not the case, individuality wouid not be inviolable. No man can communicate even the simplest thought to any other man in any full and accurate sense. For that thought is sown in a different soil, and cannot produce an identical effect. I cannot put a spot of red upon two pictures without altering each in diverse ways. It might hâve little effect on a sunset by Turner, but much on a nocturne by Whistler. The ïdentity of the two spots as spots wouid thus be fallacious. 2. This is not to say that it is advisable. O how shameful is human weakness! But it does encourage one — it is useless to deny it — to be knocked down by a Démon of whose existence one was not really quite sure. 3. Even this is for the weaker brethren. The really great Magus speaks and acts impromptu and extempore. 4. First-rate poetry is easily memorized because the ideas and the musical values correspond to man’s mental and sensory structure. — 72 —