Magick Without Tears

412 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS the sound gives the idea of a continuum , an eternal movement; and this is of course our Thelemic conception of the Universe, the "Star-sponge ," of which I have elsewhere written at such length. But at the moment I am especially desirous that you should compare and contrast this letter with the S sound. (S or Sh combined with T is discussed rather fully in Magick, pp. 336-8.) You should find it child's play to determine the significance of the sibilant. It is the one letter which necessitates the exposure of the skeleton! (E.g., the SUbconscious.) Hence "Hush!" it is the hiss of the snake, great Lord of Life and Death-(life? yes, the spermatozoon, child!) "Silence! Danger! There is a man somewhere about." The savage reaction. And, sure enough , Ish is the Hebrew for man. (Mankind is ADM, Adam, Sanskrit Admi , the Father and Mother conjoined . "Male and Female created They Man.") The S-gods are innumerable. Asar (Asi, Isis, is his female twin) Astarte , Ishtar or Ashtoreth , Set, Saturn , Shu, Zeus, (into whom the D intrudes , because S is the male as N the female, and D the father as M the mother) and the Jesus group. Here is the idea of the South, or East, both quarters referring, in ways very slightly divergent, to the element of Fire, the Sun, the Father-God in his aspect as the Holy Ghost . The ancient tradition appears in the Gospels: the Lesser Mysteries of John , beheaded with the Sword, and consumed on a Disk, and the Greater Mysteries of Jesus, pierced with a Wand, and consumed in a Cup. All same Tarot! I am not at all sure how far it is wise to take this letter. To make it complete , we should need a Book about three times the size of The Book of Thoth , and I should want another half-century of research before I started to write it! As this seems for divers reasons a little awkward in practice , I am rather afraid that we must content ourselves with this very