Magick Without Tears

476 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS to-day-in the times of "evangelical revival" the number was fantastic-who got there through fear that they had somehow committed that aforesaid "blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ." The unknown again. The Bible does not tell us what it is; only that it is unpardonable . Nor Grace, nor Faith, nor Predestination avail in the least ; for all you know , you may have committed it. Reassurance is impossible ; no ceinture de chastete avails to avert this danger. Again with drugs, it is the unknown which is the horrific factor. Most people get their information on the subject from the yellowest of yellow newspapers , magazines and novels. So darkly deep is their ignorance that they do not know what the word means-like us so often, yes? Wide sections of the U.S.A. are scared of tea and coffee. They blench when you point out that bicarbonate of soda is a drug just as much as cocaine; at the same time they literally shovel in the really dangerous Aspirin , to say nothing of the thousand Patent Medicines blared at them from every radio - as if the Press were not enough to poison the whole population! they gasp when they learn that of all classes, the first place among "drug addicts" is that of the doctor. But the crisis in which fear becomes phobia is the unreasoning aversion, the shuddering of panic , above all, the passionate refusal to learn anything about "drugs ," to analyse the conditions , still less to face them; and the spasmodic invention of imaginary terrors , as if the real dangers were not enough to serve as a warning. Now why? Surely because in the sub-conscious lies an instinct that in these obscure medicines indeed lies the key of some forbidden sanctuary. There is a fascination as irrational and therefore as strong, as the fear. Here is the point at which they link up with sex and religion . Oh, how well nigh almighty is the urgency to him who reads those few great writers who understood the subject from experience : de Quincey, Ludlow, Poe and Baudelaire: into whom burn the pointed parallels between their adventures and those of all the mystics, East and West! The worst of this correspondence-form is that you are always asking simple elementary questions which require half