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Family: Public Enemy No.1 
Cara Soror, 
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 
In your last letter you mention "family pressure." Horrid 
word, family! Its very etymology accuses it of servility and 
stagnation. 
Latin, famulus, 'a servant'; Oscan, Faamat, 'he dwells'. 
Think what horrid images it evokes from the mind. Not 
only Victorian; wherever the family has been strong, it has 
always been an engine of tyranny. Weak members or weak 
neighbours: 
it is the mob spirit crushing genius, or 
overwhelming opposition by brute arithmetic. Of course, one 
must be of good family to do anything much that is worth 
doing; but what is one to say when the question of the Great 
Work is posed? 
Bless you, the whole strength of the family is based on the 
fact that it cares for the family only: therefore its magical 
formula thus concentrated 
is of necessity hostile to so 
exclusively individual an aim as Initiation . 
Its sentiments are reciprocated. 
In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first 
condition which the Aspirant must fulfil: he must once and 
for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle. 
Even the Gospels insist clearly and weightily on this. 
Christ himself (i.e., whoever is meant by this name in this 
passage) callously disowns his mother and his brethren (Luke 
VIII: 19). And he repeatedly makes discipleship contingent 
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