The Star in the West

66 THE STAR IN THE WEST and nymphs . Thus Nature is scouted and thumped on the nose because she is essential , and man is en throned in her stead and smacked on the back be cause he happens to be moral-hence Universities and Lunatic asylums . In Love , mankind eternally verges between folly and knavery , because man is a non -essential being , and Nature an un -moral power . But before we enter on the above idea as demon strated in the poems of Aleister Crowley , it will be necessary to elucidate matters , and first to enter on a brief description of the Essential and the Moral ; showing that man as usual has got hold of “ the muddy end of the stick ; ” that the majority of the human species live in a state of purulent hypocrisy and mental indolence , and that the minority should consider themselves exceptionally fortunate if they save their souls from incarceration in the bolgia of conventional respectability . Aleister Crowley's gospel of Love is the gospel of Freedom . As love is one of those particular qualities that cannot possibly thrive under the perception of restraint , so can it only bloom in perfect freedom , whether legalized or not ; all other forms are Lust . Nature is the All - perfect , she is existence taken as a totality , and everything being a part of her , con sequently is subject to her government . The inorganic , and what we choose to call the organic , are her two greatest manifestations . Some consider these two as definitely separate ; others that the organic is but a higher form of the inorganic ; and others again that both are illusions , and that Reality , as we suppose it materially to be , does not exist outside our own minds . We do not intend to enter here the illusive