284 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
mildewed parchments of obsolete laws until they found some 
long-forgotten piece of mischief that might stop it. The 
withered husks of womanhood, idle, frustrated, spiteful and 
malignant, called up their forces, blackmailed the Church 
into supporting 
them, and began a senseless string of 
prosecutions. Notable in infamy stands out the name of Mrs. 
Ormiston Chant. 
So here we had the trial of some harmless girl for 
"accosting"; it was a scene from this that inspired Raven 
Hill's admirable cartoon. 
A "pale young curate" 
is in the witness box . "The 
prisoner," he drawled, "made improper proposals to me. The 
actual words used were: 'Why do you look so sad, Bertie?' " 
The magistrate : "A very natural question!" 
Now, fifty years later, here am I in the dock. 
("How can you expect people to take your Magick 
seriously!" I hear from every quarter , "when you write so 
gleefully about it, with your tongue always in your cheek?") 
The curate's twang, the solemnity of self-importance, all 
manners that do not disclose the real man, are abominations, 
"Anathema 
Maranatha" -or any other day of the week. 
These painted masks are devised to conceal chicanery or 
emptiness. The easy-going humorous style of Vivekananda is 
intelligible and instructive; the platitudinous hot potatoes of 
Waite are neither. The dreadful thing is that this assumption 
of learning, of holiness, of mysterious avenging powers, 
somehow deceives the average student. He does not realise 
how well and wisely such have conned Wilde's maxim: "To 
be intelligible is to be found out." 
I know that I too am at times obscure; I lament the fact. 
The reason is twofold: (a) my ineradicable belief that my 
reader knows all about the subject better than I do myself, 
and (at best) may like to hear it tackled from a novel angle, 
(b) I am carried away by the exultant exaltation of my 
theme; I boil over with rapture - not the crystal-clear, the 
cool solution that I aimed at. 
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more