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Page 1 of 21907 · PDF PAGE 60
4o KONX OM PAX dealing with them; but I should be inclined to assert that it need never go so far as to postulate their reality, though one might possibly conceive of them as credulous to that extent. One could only harm them, though, by allowing them to possess such thoughts (involving further discrimination) as the perception of the pairs of opposites as real. In fact, my thought “ Bones ” may be allowed to believe that he is real, and that there is no other God but he—for such a thought is hardly an illusion—but Bones must not and shall not …
1907 · PDF PAGE 109
…urprise The snout of scarlet stab your eyes. Bad art, my boy! I never cared To try the piece again. —We’ve aired Our dinner. By the way, though, here You are. That ’s it! How smooth and clear The moonlight runs from point to hilt! Steel in the end beats silver-gilt! Well, there’s an end of my cigar: The girls will wonder where we are. Strange! how this question of motive deceives historians—and others! said the scholar. Froude was hardly a fool; but his Henry the Eighth is incredible. So is the conventional monster. I for one shall not be surpr…
1907 · PDF PAGE 68
…ted Hindu would have declared Hearts and sent the girl across on a raft! Bones. I don’t see it, quite. Bowley. Nor do I. It’s the story, though. Bones. I suppose devotion to one’s profession is a form of Truth. But even if, as you say, it is often a question of courage and will, these are the very qualities which this truth telling stimulates. It’s a V.C. touch to reply to a lady who asks how her hat suits “ Not at all." Bowley. It seems to me mere boorishness. Bones. No! the lady is none the worse for the stab to her silly vanity; and though s…
1907 · PDF PAGE 122
…fed around the Adept (who lay low). He searched his luggage for his halo. He asked him frequently to dine Forgetting purposely the wine (Though the arcana of Nibbana Ignore the very name of Cana). He could not pass a herd of swine Without a hint; in fact, in fine, He took His Silence as a sign: “This is an Enemy of mine ! "
1907 · PDF PAGE 79
…or was his reception less than a triumph. So athletic a nation as the Japanese still were could not but honour so superb an achievement, though it cost them dear, inasmuch as the Navy League (by an astute series of political moves) compelled the party in power to treble the Navy, build a continuous line of forts around the sea-coast, and expend many billions of yen upon the scientific breeding of a more voracious species of shark than had hitherto infested their shores. So they carried Kwaw shoulder-high to the Yoshiwara, and passed him the glad…
1907 · PDF PAGE 104
…nd I in hell shall bowl and groan. Ahl God is an unskilful surgeon; We both shall weep to be alone! For we are one and may not part; And though we hurt, we love, believe mel Nor would I in my inmost heart 0f one of all your stabs bereave me. No man can hurt the indifferent stranger, No woman wound the casual friend. There is a glory born of danger; What anger gat, desire may end. Give me the phrenzy of your lip! My heart accepts your usurpature. Your body leaps beneath the whip; Our pain is in love’s very nature. It is enough. The woe is over, …
1907 · PDF PAGE 105
… host. Now, doctor, said Basil, your Italian Prince! THE DISAPPOINTED ARTIST SHALL we sit here? Aflovely night !— \Vhat you were saying, though, is right: Man scorns repulsion and attraction; Woman is wholly reflex action.— I’ll tell you of a splendid joke I had once. Have another smoke? No? Well. I wanted to determine Rightly the nature of the vermin. (A pity scientific study Makes the hands poisonous and bloody!) You see yon finger chaste and cool That moonlight flings across the pool?
1907 · PDF PAGE 97
…rceive not what they ought to see: “There is none other God than He." Oh how the good converted Fiend Worries those Postulants unweaned! Though now he dances deosil He pounds them many a purging pill. He cleans them from their piggish food; He brings them to beatitude. “ Hua is God!" quoth Asmodee: “ There is none other God than He.” A silence ensued. At last, from Denzil: You mean very much what the Hindus mean by their doctrine of Maya? Exactly so; but of course they cannot mean what they say. The thinkable is false. All our attempts to cryst…
1907 · PDF PAGE 119
…ED AN aged sorcerer there dwelt within the town of Marrakesh The fangs of Hell in life who felt twitching his soul out through the flesh. Though not originally had his moral ruin was complete: His pious parents said he had the devil’s claw-marks on his feet.
1907 · PDF PAGE 115
…e one, and remember that He is God alone, and that there is none other God than He! Right as usual, said the scholar. It’s a true story, though, in a way. I’ve seen the mask myself, and I believe it. THE GILT MASK IN Florence in the days of old there dwelt a craftsman pale and grim. The Devil entered into him, and fanned his soul with plumes of gold. He offered all he chose to ask. “ O snatch this itching soul away, So that thou animate my clay and finish me this magic mask l ” The Devil brought him graving tools; the first a ravening disease, Th…
1907 · PDF PAGE 121
… of belief is almost surrender to the belief itself. Constantine probably became a real Christian in the end. Tell us about your friend, though! from Basil. “I hitched it into verse and good,” said the big man. But as it ’s a tale with a moral, please imagine yourselves to be a set of children. I wrote it for them. Here goes! THE SUSPICIOUS EARL THERE was a poor bedevilled Earl Who saw a Witch in every girl, A Wehr-Wolf every time one smiled, A budding Vampire in a child, A Sorcerer in every man, A deep-laid N ecromantic plan In every casual wo…
1907 · PDF PAGE 64
…nter NOGAI-I. My little bit of sweet-stufi'l [She exhibits her External Splendour and Internal Corrup tion, and exit. Bones. As to levels though, all levels are one. If I cancel out a and —a, the result is the same as if I cancel roooa and -- ioooa. I am only concerned to cancel. Bowley. All right, my gay Io=I—in Kether it’s all very well. In the Ruach one must do as the Ruach does. [MRS. BONES, without, sereaming, “My spoons! My silver spoons! Where are my spoons?” Bones. Then what becomes of our Great Work? Bowley. Ignore the fool and his sill…
1907 · PDF PAGE 81
… of China; and Juju, the godfather of his country. Sublime moment in eternity! To the names of Joshua and Hezekiah add that of Kwaw! For though he was a quarter of an hour late for the appointment, the hands went back on the dial of Juju’s chronometer, so that no shadow of distrust or annoyance clouded the rapture of that supreme event. III. E E (“THE Mamrasrmc or SiMPLicrrv.”) “WHAT,” said Juju, “0 great Tao, do you recommend as a remedy for the ills of my unhappy country? " The sage replied as follows: “ O mighty and magniloquent Daimio, your…
1907 · PDF PAGE 66
…ley. Now we come down to the Black Magician and his circle again; all right, I am with you. I can never help suspecting you of morality, though ; you’re a devilish deep Johnny, but the atavism comes through. As long as you wear a tie that the Neanderthal cave man would have discarded as out of date I can never quite class you with this century. Bones. Before Abraham was, I am. Bowie]. [Taking no notice] I call it a Christian tie. Faith in your wife’s afi'ection surviving it; charity, which is not ashamed; hope—no, only Hope Brothers. Bones. This…
1907 · PDF PAGE 85
…paratus of hari-kari. “On the contrary, my lord, the ridiculous Sa Mon, who would never go to sea because he was afraid of being sick, although his genius for naval strategy had no equal in the Seven Abysses of Water, after a month as stowaway on a fishing boat (by the order of Kwaw) assumed the rank of Admiral of the Fleet, and has inflicted a series of complete and crushing defeats upon the British Admirals, who though they had been on the water all their lives, had incomprehensiny omitted to acquire any truly accurate knowledge of the metaphys…
1907 · PDF PAGE 114
… songs that shudder in the soul, and springs that gladden at the sun. They flood me with irradiate tunes of life and ecstasy and light As though some misty maid of night were girded with a million moons. They make my pulsing blood to pour in rhythmic throbs of music rare; My songs shall course the choral air from Mazaghan to Mogador. And leaping all the lesser bars I shall become the One and All, And cry the cross-dissolving call, and lose myself among the stars. This is indeed paradox, cried the scholar. You embolden me to read my “Mask of Gilt…
1907 · PDF PAGE 57
…her case will he consider the fact of the question, unless (with a secret smile) be for his own sake wishes to affirm the illusion of all thoughts. In this event he is really nearer “untruthful ness” than otherwise, even though his answer chance to coincide with fact. This is called Perception of the Illusion of the Opposition of Contraries. Again, Professor M. will reply truthfully to his disciple N.’s ques tion, “ Master, are you hungry?” “I do not know,” or cast gloom over Xenophon’s Oakaaoa Oshawa with pavraupa pawaopa, or even rokvpflqepa va…
1907 · PDF PAGE 77
…t a thoroughly irra tional system, however well it may work in practice, cannot for ever be maintained against the attacks of those who, though they may be secretly stigmatized as doctrinaires, can bring forward unanswerable arguments. The people had power, but not reason; so were amenable to the fallacies which they mistook for reason and not to the power which they would have imagined to be tyranny. An intelligent plebs is docile; an educated canaille expects everything to be logical. The shallow sophisms of the socialist were intelligible; t…
1907 · PDF PAGE 98
…nerve. If a man understand not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he understand God whom he hath not seen? Materialism is fertile, though it lead to its opposite. Theism is sterile. How would you treat an engine-driver who tried to make his engine go by prayer and philosophy? But I am mad. Here is my poem, then. Having the memory of a madman, he recited it by heart.
1907 · PDF PAGE 53
…! “What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; but Crowley waits for an answer.” He did more than wait: he took active measures to discover; and though an answer in the Key of Affirmation would, in its very exordium, beggar human language, yet we may do a certain amount to destroy some of the minor fallacies that obscure the vision of our weaker brethren, not, alas! veiling their eyes from Truth, but from the 1 The views in this essay have been deliberately left as they were originally written on 18th December. 1906, by Aleister Crowley. The discussion …