almost entirely unrelated to his éxperience, and it would certainly 
not give him sight. A similar phenomenon is observed when a 
gentleman who has taken an “honours degree” in modem 
languages at Cambridge arrives in Paris, and is unable to order 
his dinner. To exclaim against the Master Therion is to act like 
a person who, observing this, should attack both the professors 
of French and the inhabitants of Paris, and perhaps go on to 
deny the existence of France. 
Let us say, once again, that the magical language is nothîng but 
a convenient System of classification to enable the magician to 
docket his expériences as he obtains them. 
Yet this is true also, that, once the language is mastered, one can 
divine the unknown by study of the known, just as one’s 
knowledge of Latin and Greek enables one to understand some 
unfamiliar English word derived from those sources. Also, there 
is the similar case of the Periodic Law in Chemistry, which 
enables Science to prophesy, and so in the end to discover, the 
existence of certain previously unsuspected éléments in nature. 
Ail discussions upon philosophy are necessarily stérile, 
since truth is beyond language. Tliey are, liowever, useful 
if carried far enough — if carried to the point when it 
becomes apparent that ail arguments are arguments in a 
circle. * But discussions of the details of purely imaginary 
: qualifies are frivolous and may be deadly. For the great danger 
of this magical theory is that the student may mistake the 
alphabet for the things which the words represent. 
An excellent man of great intelligence, a iearned Qabalist, once 
amazed the Master Therion by stating that the Tree of Life 
was the framework of the Universe. It was as if some one had 
seriously maintained that a ait was a créature constructed by 
placing the letters C. A. T. in that order. It is no wonder that 
Magick has excited the ridicule of the unintelligent, since even its 
i. See “The Soldier and the HunchbackT Equinox I, i. The 
apparatus of human reason is simply one particular System of coordinating 
impressions; its structure is determined by the course of the évolution of 
the species. It is no more absolute than the évolution of the species. It is 
no more absolute than the mechanism of our muscles is a complété type 
wherewith ali other Systems of transmitting Force must conform. 
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