Magick Without Tears

388 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS Try another aspect. We tracked the cause: it was frustration . Good: then we must counter it. How? Only (in the last event) by getting the mind firmly fixed in the complete philosophy of Thelema. There is no such thing as frustration . Every step is a step on the Path. It is simply not true that you are being baulked. The height of your irritation is a direct measure of the intensity of your Energy. Again, you soon come to laugh at yourself for your impatience . Probably (you surmise) your trouble is exactly that: you are pushing too hard. Your mind runs back to AL, I: 44; you realize (again!) that any result actually spoils the Truth and Beauty of the Act of Will; it is almost a burden, even an insult. Rather as if I risked my life to save yours , and you tipped me half-a-crown! Here's that Book of Lies popping out its ugly mug again: "Thou hast become the Way." This is why the Ankh or "Key of Life" is a sandal-strap, borne in the hand of every God as a mark of his Godhead: a God is one who goes. (If I remember rightly, Plato derives Theos from a verb meaning 'to run' , and is heartily abused by scholars for so doing. But perhaps the dreary old sophist was not far wrong, for once.) What you need to do, then, is to knot all these ideas into a very close pattern; to make of them a consecrated Talisman. Then, when rage takes you, it can be thrown upon the fire to stifle it: to thrust against the Demon, to disintegrate him. The great point is to have this weapon very firmly constructed, very complete . Your rage will pass in one of those two ways, which are one: Rapture and Laughter. Astral Fligh t ! ! ! Excuse me if I mention it, but-no doubt the fault is mine-you seem to have failed to note any single one of all my prayerful injunctions , either in the letter or on your visit. Perhaps you thought that I should take circles and pentagrams etc. for granted; but you give no hint of the object of your journey. (No don't quote AL, I: 44 at me; it doesn't mean that. I don't expect you to answer the clerk at the booking-office "Where to, madam?" with "I don't mind