Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

educated students can be guilty of so gross a violation of the first principles of common sense. 1 A synopsis of the grades of the A.*. A.*, as illustrative of the Magical Hierarchy in Man is given in Appendix 2 “One Star in Sight.” This should be read before proceeding with the chapter. The subject is very difficult. To deal with it in full is entirely beyond the limits of this small treatise. FU RT HE R CONCERNING THE MAGICAL U NIV ERSE Ail these letters of the magical alphabet — referred to above — are like so many names on a map. Man himself is a complété microcosm. Few other beings hâve this balanced perfection. Of course every sun, every planet, may hâve beings similarly consti- tuted.2 But when we speak of dealing with the planets in Magick, 1. Long since writing the above, an even grosser imbecility bas been perpetrated. One who ought to hâve known better tried to improve the Tree of Life by turning the Serpent of Wisdom upside down! Yet he could not even make his scheme symmetrical: bis little remaining good sense revolted at the suprême atrocities. Yet be succeeded in reducing the whole Magical Alphabet to nonsense, and shewing that he had never understood its real meaning. The absurdity of any such disturbance of the arrangement of the Paths is évident to any sober student from such examples as the following. Binah, the Supernal Understanding, is connected with Tiphereth, the Human Consciousness, by Zain, Gemini, the Oracles of the Gods, or the Intuition. That is, the attribution represents a psychological fact: to replace it by The Devil is either humour or plain idiocy. Again, the card ‘Tortitude”, Léo, balances Majesty and Mercy with Strength and Severity: what sense is there in putting “Death”, the Scorpion, in its stead ? There are twenty other mistakes in the new wonderful illuminated-from-on-high attribution; the student can therefore be sure of twenty more laughs if he cares to study it. 2. Equally, of course, we hâve no means of knowing what we really are. We are limited to symbols. And it is certain that ail our sense- perceptions give only partial aspects of their objects. Sight, for instance, tells us very little about solidity, weight, composition, electrical character, thermal conductivity, etc., etc. It says nothing at ail about the very existence of such vitally important ideas as Heat, Hardness, and so on. The impression which the mind combines from the senses can never claim to be accurate or complété. We hâve indeed learnt that nothing is fn itself what it seems to be to us. 7