FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
273 matching pages
Page 1 of 141929 · PDF PAGE 423
…r to men. The message follows. It is an appeal to those who, being developed beyond the average of their fellows, see fit to take up the Great Work. This Work is then described in general terms with a few hints of its conditions. LIBER XI is a paraphrase of the instructions given in The Book of the Law for invoking Nuit. LIBER XVI, called "The Tower; or the House of God", describes a series of meditation practices, the general method being to destroy every thought that tends to arise in the mind by an act of will. The thought must be nipped in …
1929 · PDF PAGE 438
… was duly initiated, passed and raised. I was warmly welcomed by numerous English and American visitors to our Lodge; for Z--- is a very great city. I returned to England sometime later, after "passing the chair" in my Lodge, and wishing to join the Royal Arch, called on its venerable Secretary. I presented my credentials. "O Thou Great Architect of the Universe," the old man sobbed out in rage, "why dost Thou not wither this impudent impostor with Thy fire from heaven? Sir, begone! You are not a Mason at all! As all the world knows, the people…
1929 · PDF PAGE 200
…essity of "representing" what people call "nature". The soul was to be the servant of the eye. One could only suggest the relations of a great man with the universe by surrounding a more or less photographic portrait of him with the apparatus of his life work. Nelson was painted with a background of three-deckers and a telescope under his arm; Wren with a pair of compasses in front of St. Paul's. Rodin told me how he had conceived his Balzac. He had armed himself {338} with all the documents; and they had reduced him to despair. (Let me say at …
1929 · PDF PAGE 431
…the problem that the adhesion of so many prominent men of science to spiritism must be explained by psychological facts. This saved me a great deal of time. The first key that I tried fitted the lock. I noted immediately that the scientific men concerned were in some cases, though not in all, indisputably trustworthy as observers. They were capable of detecting fraud and of devising methods to exclude it. I was faced with the alternative of accepting the hypothesis of spiritism, which revolts my scientific spirit and is repudiated, by my instin…
1929 · PDF PAGE 322
…cord at this distance of time, after deliberately avoiding doing so for so long, I feel very uncertain about it; I feel that there was a great deal of genuine communication with the right people and that the Oracle is confused, contradictory and uneven, because of the interference of our personalities. There was the question of our love affair. I was absolutely in love with Rose in the ordinary sense of the term. My love for Fidelis excluded the material almost entirely. I was very proud of my love for Rose and very happy in it. The one thing I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 64
…rom me. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was {123} 1. There is a great deal more to this story; but I may not tell it --- yet. 2. WEH Note: Remember, this was the 1890s, not the 1990s, when most people will be reading this copy. the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists. At the time, I was not aware of the supreme importance of the matter. It seemed to me little more than a development of certain magical processes with which I was already familiar. It …
1929 · PDF PAGE 120
…entirely new grip of the Cabbala. One of my results demands detailed record, because it proved later to be one of the foundations of the Great Work of my life. The word Abracadabra is familiar to everyone. Why should it possess such a reputation? Eliphas Lévi's explanations left me cold. I began to suspect that it must be a corruption of some true "word of power". I investigated it by means of the Cabbala. I restored its true spelling. Analysis showed it to be indeed the essential formula of the Great Work. It showed who to unite the Macrocosm …
1929 · PDF PAGE 528
… with me through his own name being of equivalent value. There was however so far no link between the Order to which he belonged and the Great Order; 729 is not a significant number in the Cabbala of Thelema. But when I asked him to assign a mystic name to the Camel, he replied "Ahitha" which adds to 555, an obvious correlative with my own number in the Great Order, 666. It defined, so to speak, the function of the Camel in that Order. Striking as were these results, I maintained my sceptical method and proceeded to apply test after test. The W…
1929 · PDF PAGE 204
…ce. I was much touched by Henley's kindness in inviting me. I have never lost {344} the childlike humility which characterized all truly great men. Modesty is its parody. I had to wait some little while before he came down. When he did so, he was obviously suffering severe physical distress. Like Marcel Schwob himself, he was a martyr to constipation. He told me that the first half of every day was a long and painful struggle to overcome the devastating agony of his body. Only three weeks later he died. He was engaged in various tremendous lite…
1929 · PDF PAGE 444
444 consecrate himself to the particular Great Work which he came to earth in order to perform. In the VII°, which is tripartite, he is first taught the principle of equilibrium as extended to all possible moral ideas; secondly, to all possible intellectual ideas; and lastly, he is shown how, basing all his actions on this impregnable rock of justice, he may so direct his life as to undertake his Great Work with the fullest responsibility and in absolute freedom from all possibility of interferences. In the VIII°, the secret is once more manife…
1929 · PDF PAGE 316
316 It was from him that he received the instructions which were to help him to reach the great and terrible pinnacle of the mind whence the adept must plunge into the Abyss, to emerge naked, a babe --- the Babe of the Abyss. {515} "Explore the River of the Soul," said Ananda Metteya, "Whence and in what order you have come." For three days --- the longest period allowed by the Buddhist law --- he remained in the choung, meditating on this matter; but nothing seems to have come of it. He set his teeth and settled down doggedly to this considera…
1929 · PDF PAGE 127
… my nerves. Life in all its forms grew rank and gross, without a touch of subtlety. I embodied this feeling in a sonnet: . . . gross and great Her varied fruits and flowers alike create Glories most unimaginable . . . . . . yet this is sore, A stain; not one of these is delicate. For some time, I had been contemplating a lyric poem in which everything in the world should be celebrated in detail. It was a crazy notion --- one of those fantastic follies which is impossible in nature --- a species of literary "squaring the circle". I doubt whether…
1929 · PDF PAGE 340
…self over to see that every article of my costume was correct. I then began to recite what I had learnt from my sheikh in Egypt --- the "Great Word to become mad and go about naked". Subhana Allahu walhamdu lilahi walailaha illa allahu wallahu akbar wala baala wala quata illa billahi alaliu ala'zhim. Glory to God and thanks to God, and there is only one God, and God is most great, and there is no strength but in Him, the Exalted, the Great. It does not take me long to work myself up by means of a mantra, even of this lengthy type, into a state …
1929 · PDF PAGE 149
…9 I had made a point from the beginning of making sure that my life as a Wanderer of the Waste should not cut me off from my family, the great men of the past. I got India-paper editions of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Browning; and, in default of India paper, the best editions of Atalanta in Calydon. Poems and Ballads (First Series), Shelley, Keats and The Kabbalah Unveiled. I caused all these to be bound in vellum, with ties. William Morris had re-introduced this type of binding in the hope of giving a mediaeval flavour to his publications. I ado…
1929 · PDF PAGE 326
…e myself so to raise, etc., myself to the knowledge of my higher and Divine Genius that I shall be He. "In witness of which I invoke the great Angel Hua to give me a proof of his existence." P. transcribe this, and continues: "Complete and perfect visualization of ..." here are hieroglyphics which may mean "Christ as P --- on cross." He goes on: "The low dark hill, the storm, the star." But the Pylon of the Camel (i.e. the path of Gimel) {530} open, and a ray therein: withal a certain vision of A.'. remembered only as a glory now attainable. 28…
1929 · PDF PAGE 301
…asants which I was anxious to shoot. I had hitherto bagged nothing but occasional pigeons for the pot. At Talifu, nevertheless, there is great sport to be had. From the great deserts to the north, across the mighty mountains, migrate many magnificent birds, especially cranes and geese. I went out from the city northwards, for these birds migrate at this time of the year from the terrible highlands of Central Asia to the warm valleys and plains of the low country. I used to lie behind an embankment which was perhaps at one time part of the forti…
1929 · PDF PAGE 400
… simple invention. To my surprise many of my friends took fright and urged me to bring a lawsuit for libel. Fuller, in particular, to my great surprise, was almost dictatorial about my duty. He had probably been persuaded by his brother, who was a junior partner in the firm of solicitors who had represented me in the matter of Mathers. I did not care one way or the other what I did, but I took counsel with two men whose knowledge {638} of the world of men was indisputably great; one, a probationer, the Hon. Everard Fielding, the other, Raymond …
1929 · PDF PAGE 395
…really beautiful ceremony --- beautifully conceived and beautifully carried out. If there is any higher form of artistic expression than great verse and great music I have yet to learn it. I do not pretend to understand the ritual that runs like a thread of magic through these meetings of the A.'. A.'.. I do not even know what the A.'. A.'. is. But I do know that the whole ceremony was impressive, artistic and produced in those present such a feeling as Crowley must have had when he wrote --- So Shalt thou conquer space, and lastly climb, .....…
1929 · PDF PAGE 405
… made my speech and unveiled Epstein's effort in the dull drizzling weather. It was a disheartening success. The affair, however, made a great noise in the newspapers, both in France and in England, and the funniest thing about it was {645} that Epstein himself, the one person above all others who should have been gratified, one would have supposed, took my action in rather bad part. I have always found Epstein's psychology very puzzling. He is a German Jew, born in the lower East Side of New York City, and his genius, like Rodin's, is purely n…
1929 · PDF PAGE 471
…ars' worth of my goods, instead of between three and four thousand dollars' worth, as I had expected; and this disappointment left me in great straits financially, as I had at that time no immediately available resources in England.) The Patriot Bottomley is in error, I pray that he may pardon me if I indicate it. It is his kindness to me which seeks to flatter me unduly when he says that I took honours from Cambridge. Posterity will understand, on the contrary, that Cambridge has taken fresh honours from me. Nay, Patriot though thou be, Horati…