The Star in the West

100 THE STAR IN THE WEST has plunged through the Cytherean sea as a winter in Gaul . Thus Ignorance has bound , fettered , and manacled love to the dingy fornices of the lupanar . Once sink , and instead of extending a helping hand , your head is thrust for a second and third time beneath the waters of affliction by the hands of lechers and louts . The drama entitled “ Tannhäuser " is (as the author states in his preface ) almost identical with “ The Pilgrim's Progress .” It is an intricate mass of psycho logy and philosophy closely interwoven with a moral —which we shall see more fully developed when touching upon the philosophy of Aleister Crowley and it is this : that Happiness , Wisdom , Knowledge , and at length Perfection , can no more be gained by solely travelling along the direct and spotless road of Virtue , than man can be evolved from the primal protoplasmic jelly without countless generations of weeping and tortured life . The path of Vice we must tread before we can find the high road of Virtue , and Vice we must wed before we can open the gates of a more perfect understanding . The great Command ment is : “ Live in the midst of Vice ; but heed that Vice doth not live in thy midst.” “ God is the Complex and the Protoplast ." And so are we ; entwined within us , as in the poem of Tannhäuser , lie the countless threads of inherited tendencies . To suspend our soul on one alone leads only to utter destruction ; to climb to heaven we must grasp the whole tangled skein of our experiences and mount from Malkuth to Kether through the gates of Knowledge , Wisdom , and Understanding . That we 1 1 Vide Hosea .