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Page 1 of 131929 · PDF PAGE 35
35 Here, by the way, is a curious point. These bigots are so inconsistent that I have never been able to follow the working of their minds. There is a great deal of doctrine in "The Ancient Mariner" which outrages every tenet of the Plymouth Brethren, but my mother does not appear to have taken offence at that. My only suggestion is that she detested snakes for Freudian reasons; she had probably met them in dreams and had therefore good reason (from her point of view) for identifying them with the devil in his most objectionable form. My mother…
1929 · PDF PAGE 186
…lar. We got rid of the Austrians on July 1st by sending them to Camp 11 {316} at the corner of the north-east ridge of Chogo Ri. At this point the glacier divides into two large snow basins. One leads to the pass which I have named Windy Gap (21,500 feet) on whose north- west is the mountain at the head of the valley, which I called Staircase Peak, from the well-marked and regular indentations of its eastern ridge. The other is apparently a kind of blind alley, its circus of rocks seems to have no definite break. It is difficult to be sure of t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 361
… and one sure to arouse controversy. I thought out my plan of campaign during this walk. I decided first of all, that the most important point was never to forget that I was a gentleman and keep my honour the more spotless that I was assuming a position whose professors were rarely well born, more rarely well bred, hardly ever sincere, and still less frequently honest even in the most ordinary sense of the word. It seemed to me that my first duty was to prove to the world that I was not teaching Magick for money. I promised myself always to pub…
1929 · PDF PAGE 183
…ross the glacier. Although a relatively minor summit (7,500 metres), its architecture is incomparable. The name is inevitable. From this point of view the double horn could not fail to suggest the title (I had myself indulged in a little nomenclature, calling a mountain crowned by three square-cut towers of rock "Three Castles".) The next day a short march took me to Doksam. I was now almost at the head of the Baltoro glacier (15,518 feet). In nearly thirty miles of march I had only made four hundred feet of ascent. But here I was on the floor …
1929 · PDF PAGE 18
…nburnie taken at Southampton. On March 5th, 1887, Edward Crowley died. The course of the disease had been practically painless. Only one point is of interest to our present purpose. On the night of March 5th, the boy --- away at school --- dreamed that his father was dead. There was no reason for this in the ordinary way, as the reports had been highly optimistic. The boy remembers that the quality of the dream was entirely different from anything that he had known. The news of the death did not arrive in Cambridge till the following morning. T…
1929 · PDF PAGE 527
…yet there is a formal circumscription more imminent than anything which would have been possible in poetry. I limited myself by making a point of dealing thoroughly with a given subject in a single page. It was an acute agony, similar to that of Asana, to write, and the effort removed me so far from normal human consciousness that there was something indicibly ghastly in its unnaturalness when I got into bed in full daylight in the hope of acquiring a particle of warmth from the complacent Camel. I may now deal thoroughly with the complex and a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 358
…rstand why anyone should want to go to Madrid except to kill Alphonso, and I suppose there {577} is something really to be said for this point of view. They gave us no real annoyance, our passports being as impressive as they were unintelligible. Of course they didn't really think we were anarchists, and they would not have cared if we had been; but most of these unhappy men were marooned for indefinite periods in ghastly districts where there was absolutely no amusement of any kind. To arrest us was a good excuse to have someone to talk to. Th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 177
…t Askole, however, several of the servants were slightly indisposed for a couple of days. We spent ten days in this village. Beyond this point there are no supplies of any sort. It was therefore necessary to establish a depot of food for the men higher up. The difficulty in travelling in uninhabited countries is that a man who eats (say) two pounds a day and carries sixty pounds can carry nothing except his own food on a journey of thirty marches. Our problem was how to get about one hundred and ten loads deposited at a distance representing (t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 368
…udimentary idea of one type of intuition with whose laws those of the reason have nothing whatever in common. I do not wish to press the point. In these "lonesome latter days" there are people in the world who can scarcely define the difference between Dedekindian and Cantorian cuts, and whose nights are not disturbed by anxiety about the truth of Fermat's last theorem. A fortiori, we had better swoop on the Straits of Gibraltar and tell a tale of Tangiers. (I will confine myself to mentioning that I got a charming letter from my exquisite Doro…
1929 · PDF PAGE 284
… in the Abhidhamma, the metaphysical section of the Buddhist {464} canon. I could not deny the excellence of his intention, but from the point of view of the average Western student, the terms are so jawbreaking as to be heartbreaking. I said: We already possess a universal language which does not depend on grammar. The fundamentals of mathematics are the basis of the Holy Cabbala. It is natural and proper to represent the cosmos, or any part of it, or any operation of it, or the operation of any part of it, by the symbols of pure mathematics. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 374
…they do in the showing forth of the exact sign which I had demanded, is simply to strain the theory of probabilities beyond the breaking point. Here then are two complicated episodes which go to prove that I am walking, not by faith but by sight, in my relations with the Secret Chiefs; and these are but two links in a very long chain. This account of my career will describe many others equally striking. I might, perhaps, deny my inmost instinct the right to testify were any one case of this kind in question; but when, year after year, the same …
1929 · PDF PAGE 364
…me in China, but my heart and my hand are pledged to the Arab. I had begun to train Neuburg seriously in Magick and mysticism. The first point was, of course, to get rid of any prejudices and superstitions. This was not too difficult, he being a professed agnostic. But the second point was to train him in the technique. This was well enough as far as Magick was concerned, for he naturally possessed the poetic and dramatic instincts, the sense of the fitness of gesture, and so on: and, more important than all, it came natural to him to arouse in…
1929 · PDF PAGE 427
427 looked. No villa was visible. I said so. She had to agree; yet stuck to her point that she saw it. I subsequently returned to that spot and found that a short section of wall, perhaps fifteen feet of narrow edge of masonry, is just perceptible through a gap in the vegetation. We drove on; we came to a tiny piazza, on one side of which was a church. "That is the square and the church", she exclaimed, "that I saw in my dream!" We drove on. The lane became narrower, rougher and steeper. Little more than a hundred yards ahead it was completely …
1929 · PDF PAGE 78
…r a career of devoted labour on behalf of "the Creation which groaneth and travaileth". My poetry at this time is charged to the highest point with these aspirations. I may mention the dedication to Songs of the Spirit, "The Quest", "The Alchemist", "The Philosopher's Progress", "A Spring Snowstorm in WAstdale", "Succubus", "Nightfall", "The Storm", "Wheat and Wine", "Vespers", {146} "Astrology" and "Daedalus". In "the Farewell of Paracelsus to Aprile", "The Initiation", "Isaiah" and "Power", I have expressed my ideas about the ordeals which mi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 22
22 The situation resulted in a very amusing way. Having got to the point of saying. "Evil, be thou my good," I racked my brains to discover some really abominable crimes to do. In a moment of desperate daring I sneaked one Sunday morning into the church frequented by my Uncle Tom on Streatham Common, prepared, so to speak, to wallow in it. It was one of the most bitter disappointments of my life! I could not detect anything which satisfied my ideas of damnation. For a year or two after my father's death my mother did not seem to settle down; an…
1929 · PDF PAGE 431
…eputed 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 the sexual power begins to decline. I submit the following explanation of the psychological process of conversion in these cases. 1. The failure of the sexual energy turns their attention t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 554
…ot attained. In order to devote himself to this, he proposed to neglect the work prescribed for the Grade which he actually possessed. I pointed this out, and after some show of sulks, he agreed. A day or so later, in discussing some point of magical theory, I happened to say, "I want you to understand very thoroughly what this implies." He retorted violently, "I'm not an 8° = 3ř! To understand is not a part of the work of my Grade!" To that he stuck. It was useless to argue that the understanding of an 8° = 3ř has a technical definition, and t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 432
432 8. They concentrate their attention on these unexplained points until they fill the entire point of view. 9. What with overstrained attention, Freudian forgetfulness and the illusions of desire, they quiet their consciences sufficiently to assert the genuineness of some few of the phenomena, preferably those which are, so to speak, the thin end of the wedge and are explicable on hypotheses not fundamentally repugnant to the main body of scientific truth. 10. The critical attitude of their colleagues excites the usual reaction and rouses the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 238
…SED. Just as The book of the Law reconciles an impersonal and infinite interpretation of the cosmos with an egocentric and practical viewpoint, so it makes "infinite space" speak in the language of a goddess and deals with the details of eating and drinking: Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me. The emancipation of mankind from all limitations whatever is one of the main …
1929 · PDF PAGE 269
…ings would give pain to the relations of the party! No, better wait until the accident had happened, and then it would be interesting to point out why it had happened. Of course that is the journalistic point of view. Disasters should not be prevented. Heaven forbid! We should rather encourage battle, murder and sudden death. Our business is to make the splash. This psychology is one of my reasons for holding the press in horror. I do not believe in restrictions on business enterprise, but it really ought to be made impossible that it should be…