Magick Without Tears

52 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 334