112 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
Unless your Universe is perfect-and perfection includes 
the idea of balance-how 
can you come even to 
Atmadarshana? Hindus may maintain that Atmadarshana, or 
at any rate Shivadarshana, is the equivalent of crossing the 
Abyss. Beware of any such conclusions! The Trances are 
simply isolated experiences, 
sharply cut off from normal 
thought-life. 
To cross the Abyss is a permanent 
and 
fundamental revolution in the whole of one's being. 
Much more, upon the brink of the Abyss. If there be 
missing or redundant even one atom, the entire monstrous, 
the portentous 
mass must tend to move with irresistible 
impact, in such direction as to restore the equilibrium. To 
deflect it-well, think of a gyroscope! How then can you 
destroy it in one sole stupendous gesture? Ah! Listen to The 
Vision and the Voice. 
Perhaps the best and simplest plan is for me to pick out 
the most important of the relevant passages and put them 
together as an appendix to this letter. Also, by contrast, 
those allusions to the "Black Brothers" and the "Left-hand 
Path." This ought to give you a clear idea of what each is, 
and does, of what distinguishes their respective methods in 
some ways so confusingly alike. I hope indeed most sincerely 
that you will whet your Magical Dagger on the Stone of the 
Wise, and wield most deftly and determinedly 
both the 
White-handled and the Black-handled Burin. In trying to 
express these opinions, I am constantly haunted by the dread 
that I may be missing some crucial point, or even allowing a 
mere quibble to pass for argument. It makes it only all the 
worse when one has become so habituated by Neschamic 
ideas, to knowing, even before one says it, that what one is 
going to say is of necessity untrue , as untrue as it is 
contradictory. So what can it possibly matter what one says? 
Such doubts are dampers! 
"Enough of Because! be he damned for a dog!" 
Here follow the quotations 
from The Vision and the 
Voice.