Magick Without Tears

"SELF" INTROVERSION 275 Latin and Greek don't help us at all; and when we try Eastern languages, it seems, dimly, to give the idea of the Ego, whatever that may be. Or perhaps "that combination which is unified by Ahamkara, the 'Ego-making faculty'." Decidedly not illuminating! One can't use the word as an ordinary noun . Skeat doesn't even label it as such. One can hardly say: Mr. Blenkinsop's self is good, or rheumatic, or gone for a walk. It makes nonsense . Yet Philosophy has picked out this hapless Tetragrammaton, and made endless mud pies with it! When one says: "I fell and hurt myself," it's only a conventional abbreviation. One means "my nose," or "my elbow," as the case may be! No, I can't conscientiously admit it as a noun. More accurately: "my body fell, and I am suffering from the injury thereby caused to my whatever it was." So what? Brahman-don't confuse with the Brahma of the Trimurti, as so many Nippies and Clippies are but too liable to do-is the macro cosmic Negative Absolute, when cross-examined; its microcosm is Purusha or A tma. Very near our own Qabalistic Zero-Nought in no dimensions-equals Infmity (air connu). Then comes Buddhi, which curates, bookmakers' clerks, miners and Privy Councillors so often mistake for Buddha, the faculty of discrimination. Pretty much like the o = 2 equation in our system. Next, the Higher Manas, which is our Neschamah, as near as a toucher; and the Lower Manas, which, as every Lovely and Cutie well knows, is our Ruach. The rest of the Hindu system can easily be fitted in. Note, however, the Ahamkara, usually translated "Ego-making faculty," which collects what it can from this dump, and labels it "I." Well, then, what is this "Higher Self' that you roll out upon me? Actually, we are very far from being out of the wood. This Ut, of Udgitha, who looms so large in the Upanishads; the