Magick Without Tears

THE SECRET CHIEFS 95 the Aeon, and do all the chores appurtenant to that particular Work. The Burden is heavier as the years go by; but-Perdurabo. Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 P.S. Reading this typescript over for "literals," it struck me that you would ask, very reasonably, "But if the Secret Masters have these boundless powers, why do They allow you to be plagued by printers, held up for lack of secretaries, worried by all sorts of practical problems? ... Why, in a word, does anything ever go wrong?" There are several lines of reply; coalescing, they suffice: 1. What is "wrong"? Since four wars is Their idea of "right," you may well ask by what standard you may judge events. 2. Their Work is creative; They operate on the dull mass of unrealized possibilities. Thus they meet, firstly, the opposition of Inertia; secondly, the recoil, the reaction, the rebound. 3. Things theoretically feasible are practically impossible when (a) desirable though their accomplishment may be, it is not the one feat essential to the particular Work in hand at the moment; (b) the sum total of available energy being used up by that special task, there is none available for side-issues; (c) the opposition, passive or active, is too strong, temporarily, to overcome. More largely, one cannot judge how a plan is progressing when one has no precise idea what it is. A soldier is told to "attack"; he may be intended to win through, to cover a general retreat, or to gain time by deliberate sacrifice. Only the Commander in Chief knows what the order means, or why he issues it; and even he does not know the issue, or whether it will display and justify his military skill and judgment. ·