Magick Without Tears

ORIGINAL SIN 417 The dead dog floats with the stream; in puritan France the best women are harlots; in vicious England the best women are virgins. If only the Archbishop of Canterbury were to go naked in the streets and beg his bread! The new Christ, like the old, is the friend of publicans and sinners; because his nature is ascetic. o if every-man did No Matter What, provided that it is the one thing that he will not and cannot do. That settles it. We do progress; but how? Not by the tinkering of the meliorist; not by the crushing of initiative ; not by laws and regulations which hamstring the racehorse, and handcuff the boxer; but by the innovations of the eccentric, by the phantasies of the hashish-dreamer of philosophy, by the aspirations of the idealist to the impossible, by the imagination of the revolutionary, by the perilous adventure of the pioneer. Progress is by leaps and bounds , by breaking from custom, by working on untried experiments; in short, by the follies and crimes of men of genius, only recognizable as wisdom and virtue after they have been tortured to death, and their murderers reap gloatingly the harvest of the seeds they sowed at midnight. Damn it! All this is so trite that I am half ashamed to write it; and yet-everyone acquiesces with a smile, and goes off to vote another set of fetters for his feet! Sin? This is the sin of sins: Restriction . All boots from the one last ; all beautifully polished on parade; the March of Time will find not much but hobbling! More of this when I answer your letter (just in as I drew rein to read this over) about Education . Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally, 666 P.S. On reading this, I note that I passed over with deserved