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Page 1 of 101929 · PDF PAGE 560
…. I will add that the wealthy and alleged aristocratic classes are sprinkled much too thinly with individuals for whom I have any use. I find them selfish and boring. The first is the cause of the second, for the secret is that they lack faith in life; seeking self they have found an inane nullity, and being bored with themselves they naturally bore other people. But French artists, the professional classes and the much abused bourgeois are almost always delightful. What's more, you can trust them to do you a good turn when opportunity occurs. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 143
…idualizes me and my nose, affects my nose, disproves my nose, abolishes, annihilates and expunges my nose. I was very alarmed one day to find that I had completely lost the object of concentration. I could not think what I wished to find or where to find it. I naturally thought something was very wrong. Here was an occasion when Allan's experience proved invaluable. Without it, I might have been {247} frightened into giving up the practice. But he told me the result was good, showing that I was approaching the state of what is called "neighbour…
1929 · PDF PAGE 434
…ual and even the romantic sides of her character wasted away. She rushed desperately from one prospect of prosperity to another, only to find herself despised and duped by the men she was trying to deceive. At last she dropped to the depth of despair and in her drowning struggles lost her last link with life and love. She became a traitor and a thief; and bolted with her spoils to hide herself, like Fafnir, from the very eye of heaven. I failed to divine the essential hopelessness of helping her. I idealized her; I robed her in the royal vestur…
1929 · PDF PAGE 51
…ditions, and avalanches or falling stones, two is evidently much safer than three. Another point is that it is at least twice as hard to find two competent companions as it is to find one. The combination of Mummery, Collie and Hastings could hardly happen again in a century. Mummery had a genius for rock climbing and an uncanny instinct for mountain problems in general. Collie was brilliant all round and had an absolute scientific knowledge of materials and a feeling for topography. Hastings was a tower of physical strength and endurance, an i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 310
…a on May 26th, arriving in Liverpool on June 2nd after a pleasant voyage, during the latter part of which I wrote most of Rosa Coeli, to find letters awaiting me to tell me of the tragedy of which I have given an account elsewhere. {503} From the moment of landing I struck a sequence of physical shocks. As I struggled to my feet after the blasting bolt of my bereavement, I found myself with an infected gland in the groin which required excision. The first day I left the nursing home I got a chill in the right eye which obstructed a nasal duct a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 354
… form of art should appeal to me. I take fits of it. I go for a month without thinking of the subject at all, and then all of a sudden I find myself with ideas and writing them down. I entirely agree that the short story is one of the most delicate and powerful forms of expression. It forms a link with poetry because one can work up to ecstasy of one kind or another in a more lyric manner than is possible in a novel; the emotion evoked is doubtless more limited, but it can be made for this very reason better defined. The ecstasy of Wuthering He…
1929 · PDF PAGE 431
…sm, which revolts my scientific spirit and is repudiated, by my instinct as an initiate, for a foul blasphemy and profanation, or I must find some reason for supposing that a number of men reputed trustworthy observers are for some reason rendered suddenly incompetent. I have said a number of prominent men of science, but in point of fact very few of them have any sort of claim to rank in the first flight. However, such as they are, it is certainly curious that their first leaning towards spiritism becomes manifest on their reaching an age when…
1929 · PDF PAGE 103
…t thing in the world for a man with forty thousand pounds, who is ready to spend every penny of it on the achievement of his purpose, to find a suitable house in a very few weeks. But a magical house is as hard to find as a magical book to publish. I scoured the country in vain. Not till the end of August 1899 did I find an estate which suited me. This was the manor of Boleskine and Abertarff, on the south-east side of Loch Ness, half way between Inverfarigaig and Foyers. By paying twice as much as it was worth, I got it, gave up my flat and se…
1929 · PDF PAGE 440
…illusioned. He may join the Craft with some idea of fellowship, because it is a tradition in his family to do so, or because he hopes to find in the Secret of the Mysteries something which he does not find in any of the exoteric forms of religion. How is it that the same Order satisfies --- more or less --- aspirations so diverse? We are brought at last face to face with the fundamental problem of the masonic historian --- the origin of the whole business. Without any hesitation at all, one may confess that on this critical question nothing is …
1929 · PDF PAGE 111
…proposal for dealing with the refractory "temple". I. The Second Order to be summoned at various times during two or three days. They to find, on being admitted one by one, a masked man in authority and a scribe. These questions, etc. pass, after pledge of secrecy concerning interview. A. Are you convinced of the truth of the doctrines and knowledge received in the grade of 5° = 6ř? Yes or No? If yes (1) Then their origin can spring from a pure source only? If no (2) I degrade you to be a Lord of the Paths in the Portal in the Vault of the Adep…
1929 · PDF PAGE 49
…rence for the Alpine guide, and hastened to engage Joseph Pingerra, who was supposed to be the best in the valley. I was very shocked to find that is was customary in the Tyrol to go two on a rope instead of three, though in point of fact this was the only thing they knew about climbing. But I was amazed beyond measure to find that I was a much better rock climber than my guide. He did not know what rock climbing was, judged by Cumberland standards! I had no experience of snow and ice; so here, of course, I was the reverent disciple. Imagine my…
1929 · PDF PAGE 126
… proper place. {221} 26 I broke the journey at El Paso. Coming straight from the quiet civilization of Mexico it was a terrible shock to find myself in touch with the coarse and brutal barbarism of Texas. There are many unpleasant sides of life which cannot be avoided without shirking reality altogether; but in the United States they were naked and horrible. The lust of money raged stark without the softening influences of courtesy. Drunkenness was stripped of good fellowship; the sisterhood of sin presented no deceptive attractions. The most i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 31
31 luminously in focus, I find it very hard to remember the order in which they occurred. There are, moreover, {72} curious contradictions in myself against which I seem always to be stumbling. For example, as late as 1894, I think it must be, I find myself writing hymns of quite acceptable piety. One was published in "The" "Christian;" it began: I am a blind man on a helmless ship Without a compass on a stormy sea. I cannot sink, for God will hold me up, etc. Again, I wrote a poem on the death of my Aunt Ada, which I thought good enough to inc…
1929 · PDF PAGE 541
…n of servitude". The Book of the Law anticipates this: "... the slaves shall serve. ..." The bulk of humanity, having no true will, will find themselves powerless. It will be for us to rule them wisely. We must secure their happiness and train them for ultimate freedom by setting them tasks for which their nature fits them. In the past, the mob without will or mind have been treated without sense or scruple; a mistake socially, economically and politically, no less than from the humanitarian point of view. We must remember that each man and wom…
1929 · PDF PAGE 228
…s law of parsimony, it is much simpler to say that the spirit of the bat had entered into her. (As I revise these pages for the press, I find myself constantly annoyed {380} by having to try to find long roundabout "rational" explanations for all the wonders I have seen and heard. It is silly, too, now that we are getting clear at last of the obsession of Victorian cocksure materialism --- science disguised as a fat hausfrau!) {381} 48 Life in the jungle has many incidents of a more frequent and less amusing type. One night, also in a baghla, I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 544
…ed that my love for her would make me forget my friendship, cancel my obligations and abrogate my affection. She was amazed and angry to find that my attitude to the Ape had not been altered in any way whatever by my liaison with her. She supposed the conventional stupidities, cruelties and crimes were laws of nature; not understanding the Law of Thelema and hankering after exclusive possession, she fell into a frenzy of mistrust and jealousy. It made things worse that I smilingly accepted her tantrums exactly as an alienist with the outbursts …
1929 · PDF PAGE 90
…he hotel; no one knew where he had gone. I telegraphed all over the valley. He was located at the Gorner Grat. I sped up the mountain to find him. Again he had gone. I rushed back. In vain I hunted him through the hotels and at the railway station. At last I got a report than an Englishmen corresponding to {164} his description had started to walk down the valley to Brigue. I hurled myself headlong in pursuit. This time I was rewarded. I caught up with him some ten miles below Zermatt. I told him of my search for the Secret Sanctuary of the Sai…
1929 · PDF PAGE 428
…y afterwards and exploited her in the United States. Besides this, I had analysed carefully the printed reports of the sittings. I could find no loophole; until one day my precious memory came to the rescue. It told me what is not by any means apparent on a straightforward reading, that in one of the sances, I think number six, no phenomena occurred in the cabinet. Somewhere else in the book, quite disconnectedly, we find that during this sance there was no table in the cabinet. "Aha!" said I, "so when the trumpets and tambourines and so on a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 536
…xious to help the progress of humanity; but here again, the wish was partly a puff-ball of pride, partly a maudlin sentiment such as one finds in servants' hall novelettes. The ignorance of all, without exception, was simply without limit. It {845} was rare to find a man who knew so much as the names of the most famous classics. Their ignorance was not even accessible to instruction. It was armourplated, and adorned with a bigoted belief in the most blatant balderdash. I met the heads of four flourishing cults who claimed to be Rosicrucians. No…
1929 · PDF PAGE 331
…gy of Hashish" pleases me more every time I read it. It contains such a wealth of knowledge, it shows such profundity of thought, that I find myself today still wondering how I ever wrote it. I find in it ideas which I am hardly aware that I possess today; how I could have thought {537} thus at this elementary stage of my career, and written it all down in a single day, is bewildering. It is completely free from any blemishes of the old type. The sublimity of my subject possessed me. One other seed had fallen upon fertile ground. "The chance of…