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Page 1 of 51913 · PDF PAGE 576
… A kindly and gentle philosophy would avoid all these evils. If we close our eyes to the defects of our neighbour, and only consider his good qualities, we shall find good and benevolence everywhere. The most perverse man has a good side to him, and softens when one knows how to take him. If you had nothing in common with the vices of men, you would not even perceive them. Friendship, and the devotions which it inspires, are found even in prisons and in convict stations. The horrible Lacenaire faithfully returned any money which had been lent t…
1913 · PDF PAGE 583
…RIES CHAPTER IV ARCANUM ARCANORUM THE great arcanum—that is to say, the unutterable and inexplicable secret—is the absolute knowledge of good and of evil. “When you have eaten the fruit of this tree, you will be as the gods,” said the Serpent. ABSURDITE “Tf you eat of it, you will die,” replied Divine Wisdom. Thus good and evil bear fruit on one same tree, and from one same root. Good personified is God. Evil personified is the Devil. To know the secret or the formula of God is to be God. To know the secret or the formula of the Devil is to be …
1913 · PDF PAGE 504
THE EQUINOX God and the devil are the ideals of absolute good and evil. But man never conceives absolute evil, save as a false idea of good. Good only can be absolute; and evil is only relative to our ignorance, and to our errors. Every man, in order to be a God, first makes himself a devil; but as the law of solidarity is universal, the hierarchy exists in hell as it does in heaven. A wicked man will always find one more wicked than himself to do him harm; andwhen the evil is at its climax, it must cease, for it could only continue by the anni…
1913 · PDF PAGE 534
THE EQUINOX Axiom II To will evil, is to will death. A perverse will is a begin- ning of suicide. Axiom III To will good with violence, is to will evil, for violence produces disorder, and disorder produces evil. Axiom IV One can, and one should, accept evil as the means of good; but one must never will it or do it, otherwise one would destroy with one hand what one builds with the other. Good faith never justifies bad means; it corrects them when one undergoes them, and condemns them when one takes them. Axiom V To have the right to possess al…
1913 · PDF PAGE 542
…, Fraternity, ” will be nothing but a threefold lie. CHAPTER III MYSTERIOUS INFLUENCES No middle course is possible. Every man is either good or bad. The indifferent, the lukewarm are not good; they are consequently bad, and the worst of all the bad, for they are imbecile and cowardly. The battle of life is like a civil war; those who remain neutral betray both parties alike, and re- nounce the right to be numbered among the children of the fatherland. We all of us breathe in the life of others, and we breathe upon them in some sort a part of o…
1913 · PDF PAGE 585
THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES To eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is to associate evil with good, and assimilate the one to the other. It is to cover the radiant countenance of Osiris with the mask of Typhon. It is to raise the sacred veil of Isis; it is to profane the sanctuary. The rash man who dares to look at the sun without protection becomes blind, and from that moment for him the sun is black. We are forbidden to say more on this subject; we shall conclude our revelation by the figure of three pentacles. These three st…
1913 · PDF PAGE 345
THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES The basis of society is the exchange of right, duty and good faith. Right is property, exchange is necessity, good faith is duty. He who wants to receive more than he gives, or who wants to receive without giving, is a thief. Property is the right to dispose of a portion of the com- mon wealth; it is not the right to destroy, nor the right to sequestrate. To destroy or sequestrate the common wealth is not to possess; it is to steal. I say common wealth, because the true proprietor of all things is God, who wishes all th…
1913 · PDF PAGE 453
…e owner of the gv/moire; “I do not know them, and I have entered into no agreement with them. I only know that among them the chiefs are good, the inter- mediate rank partly good and partly evil; the inferiors bad, but blindly, and without its being possible for them to do better. He whom I evoked, and who has often appeared to me, belongs to the most elevated hierarchy; for he was good- looking, well dressed, and always gave me favourable answers. But I have lost a page of my grimoire, the first, the most important, that which bore the autogra…
1913 · PDF PAGE 532
…he ordination of eternal wisdom, the education of the will of man. The dignity of man consists in doing what he will, and in willing the good, in conformity with the knowledge of truth. The good in conformity with the true, is the just. Justice is the practice of reason. Reason is the word of reality. Reality is the science of truth. Truth is idea identical with being. Man arrives at the absolute idea of being by two roads, experience and hypothesis. Hypothesis is probable when it is necessitated by the teachings of experience; it is improbable…
1913 · PDF PAGE 401
…ice? A. A moral man. g. And if he sacrifices his interests to justice? a. A man of honour. g. Andif in order to imitate the grandeur and goodness of Providence he does more than his duty, and sacrifices his right to the good of others? a. A hero. What is the principle of true heroism ? Faith. What is its support? Hope. And its rule? Charity. What is the Good ? Order. What is the Evil? . Disorder. What is permissible pleasure? Enjoyment of order. What is forbidden pleasure? Enjoyment of disorder. Pope POPOPrPOPOPO 103,
1913 · PDF PAGE 396
PART II PHILOSOPHICAL MYSTERIES PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS It has been said that beauty is the splendour of truth. Now moral beauty is goodness. It is beautiful to be good. To be intelligently good, one must be just. To be just, one must act reasonably. To act reasonably, one must have the knowledge of reality. To have the knowledge of reality, one must have conscious- ness of truth. To have consciousness of truth, one must have an exact notion of being. Being, truth, reason and justice are the common objects of the researches of science, and o…
1913 · PDF PAGE 328
…t love God, and not fear Czsar; as it is written in the Holy Book, “ He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” You wish to be good? Then be just. You wish to be just? Then be free. The vices which make man like the brute are the first enemies of his liberty. Consider the drunkard, and tell me if this unclean brute can be called free ! The miser curses the life of his father, and, like the crow, hungers for corpses. The goal of the ambitious man is—ruins; it is the delirium of envy! The debauchee spits upon the breast of his mother, a…
1913 · PDF PAGE 271
…E CONCLUSIONS OF THE RESEARCHES OF MODERN SCIENCE. By J, W. Frincs. Wm. Rider & Son, Ltd., London, 2s. 6d. net. THIS little book is very good, and might have been much better if the author had any knowledge of Science or of the Occult Arts. A.C, 233
1913 · PDF PAGE 533
… contradiction and without error: “Gop AND LiBErTy.” As there is no liberty for man but in the order which results from the true and the good, one may say that the conquest of liberty is the great work of the human soul. Man, by freeing himself from his evil passions and their slavery, creates himself, as it were, a second time. Nature made him living and suffering; he makes himself happy and immortal; he thus becomes the representative of divinity upon earth, and (relatively) exercises its almighty power. Axiom I Nothing resists the will of ma…
1913 · PDF PAGE 329
THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES He who seeks the origin of evil, seeks the source of what is not. Evil is the disordered appetite of good, the unfruitful attempt of an unskilful will. Every one possesses the fruit of his work, and poverty is only the spur to toil. For the flock of men, suffering is like the shepherd dog, who bites the wool of the sheep to put them back in the right way. It is because of shadow that we are able to see light; because of cold that we feel heat; because of pain that we are sensible to pleasure. Evil is then for us the occ…
1913 · PDF PAGE 354
…es of life and the principles of death, it kills and it vivifies. It is like the angel of the judgment who separates the wicked from the good. Civilization transforms men of good will into angels of light, and lowers the selfish man beneath the brute; it is the corruption of bodies and the emancipation of souls. The impious world of the giants raised to Heaven the soul of Enoch; above the Bacchanals of primitive Greece rises the harmonious spirit of Orpheus. Socrates and Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, resume, in explaining them, all the aspir…
1913 · PDF PAGE 439
…he least thing!. . .” “By permission, sir; it is in religious matters, above all, that authority can never be wrong. . . ._ In religion, good is hierarchy, and evil is anarchy; to what would the influence of the priesthood be reduced, in effect, if you set up the prin- ciple that one must rather believe the testimony of one’s senses than the decision of the Church? Is not the Church more visible than all your miracles? Those who see miracles and who do not see the Church are much more to be pitied than the blind, for there remains to them not e…
1913 · PDF PAGE 574
… see that it is itself who is the dupe, believing itself strong in depriving itself of all the delights of the soul. To believe in moral good is to possess that good: for this reason the Saviour of the world promises the kingdom of heaven to those who should make themselves like little children. What is childhood? It is the age of faith. The child knows nothing yet of life ; and thus he radiates confident immortality. Is it possible for him to doubt the devotion, the tenderness, the friendship, and the love of Providence when he is in the arms …
1913 · PDF PAGE 561
…n over- mastering affection, is the germ of our paradise or of our Hell. Each one of us (in a sense) conceives, bears, and nourishes his good or evil angel. The conception of truth gives birth in us to the good genius; intentional untruth hatches and brings up nightmares and phantoms. Everyone must nourish his children; and our life consumes itself for the sake of our thoughts. Happy are those who find again immortality in the creations of their soul! Woe unto them who wear them- selves out to nourish falsehood and to fatten death! for every on…
1913 · PDF PAGE 556
…roken sword of justice anarchy would forge its daggers. “Tf God did away with Hell, men would make another in order to defy Him,” said a good priest to us one day. He was right: and it is for that reason that Hell is so anxious to be done away with. Emancipation! is the cry of every vice. Emancipation of murder by the abolition of the pain of death; emancipation of prostitution and infanticide by the abolition of marriage; emancipation of idleness and rapine by the abolition of property. . . . So revolves the whirlwind of perversity until it ar…