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.
162 matching pages
Page 1 of 91929 · PDF PAGE 3
…ge) To Three Friends J. W. N. SULLIVAN who suggested this booklet AUGUSTUS JOHN who first gave practical assistance P. R. STEPHENSEN who saw the point And To Three Immortal Memories RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON the perfect pioneer of spiritual and physical adventure OSCAR ECKENSTEIN who trained me to follow the trail ALLAN BENNETT who did what he could P A R T O N E TOWARDS THE GOLDEN DAWN. PRELUDE "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Not only to this autohagiography --- as he amusedly insists on calling it --- of Aleister Crowley, but …
1929 · PDF PAGE 305
…lween for pre-eminence in deadliness, both from disease and demons. The Chinese refuse to sleep even a single night in the valley; but I saw no cachectics in the village any more than I had seen victims of opium elsewhere. The Red River at this point runs through a deep and narrow gorge. We found it stiflingly hot, after our long exposure to the icy winds of the plateau. I had hired a dup-out to take us down the rapids to Hokow, and her I saw my chance of getting even with the coolies. Having got everything aboard, I proceeded to pay the head m…
1929 · PDF PAGE 109
… had defiled the purity of the Virgin of the World: and "he whom thou now hast" was materialism (or modern thought). Other scenes also I saw in His Life: and behold I also was crucified! Now did I go backwards ion time even unto Berashith, the Beginning, and was permitted to see marvellous things. First the Abyss of the Water: on which I, even I, brooded amid other {192} 1. This incident was once quoted by one of my critics as illustrative of the absurdity of Magick --- as if Magick were responsible for the irrationality of dreams! 2. This horr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 319
…our ........Wherein the King-Ghost hath his power! The King-Ghost girds me with his gibbering creatures, ....My dreams of old that never saw the sun. He shows me, in a mocking glass, their features, ....The twin fiends "Might-have-been" and "Should-have-done". ........Keep us, by Jesu's ruth, ........What time the King-Ghost grins the truth! The King-Ghost boasts eternal usurpature; ....For in this pool of tears his fingers fret I had imagined, by enduring nature, ....The twin gods "Thus-will-I" and "May-be-yet". ........God, keep us most from …
1929 · PDF PAGE 348
…flowing with exquisitely subtle humour, and being one of the best natured people that ever trod this planet. But from the first moment I saw him, I saw far more than this; I read an {562} altogether extraordinary capacity for Magick. We soon drifted into talking about the subject and I found that he already practised a good deal of spiritualism and clairvoyance. The former was his bane. The habit of making himself spiritually passive and inviting the entire spirit world to obsess him proved finally fatal to him. Despite all we could do to prote…
1929 · PDF PAGE 87
…t. One day my wife and a friend came home from shopping. They had called at the chemist's who had sprayed them with "Shem-el-nessim". We saw them coming and went to the door to receive them. Eckenstein made one rush --- like a bull --- for the window of the sitting-rrom, flung it open and spent the next quarter of an hour leaning out and gasping for breath. Eckenstein was a great connoisseur of puzzles. It is extremely useful, by the way, to be able to occupy the mind in such ways when one has not the conveniences or inclination for one's regul…
1929 · PDF PAGE 258
…he leeches of the district are a most peculiar tribe. For some reason, they can only live within a very well-defined belt. Thus, I never saw a leech at Darjeeling, while at Lebong, some five hundred feet lower, they are a pest. The Terai is the haunt of some of the most tenacious of animals, but the leech has cleared them out completely. A single leech will kill a pony. It works its way up into the nostril and the pony simply bleeds to death. Hence the Anglo-Indian proverb. "A jok's a jok [Hindustani for leech] but a jok up your nose is no jok.…
1929 · PDF PAGE 386
…ies of comparative religion had led me to adumbrate. The complexity of the whole vast subject resolved itself into shining simplicity, I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the truth in terms of Time. I understood directly that the formula of Osiris necessarily assumed all sorts of apparently incompatible forms as it was applied to different conditions of race, climate and similar conditions. I saw also that Horus might reconcile all religions, it being possible now to bring all countries to agree on a few fundamental principles. Sc…
1929 · PDF PAGE 426
…tem of mysticism and Magick, to be called Book Four, and told me that by means of this book, I should prevail against public neglect. It saw no objection to writing such a book; on quite rational grounds, it was a proper course of action, I therefore agreed to do {677} so. But Ab-ul-Diz was determined to dictate the conditions in which the book should be written; and this was a difficult matter. He wanted us to travel to an appropriate place. On this point I was not wholly satisfied with the result of my cross-examination. I know now that I was…
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 517
…o keep me on that psychological razor-edge whence one can always see the abyss as one can no longer do when one is in it. In this way, I saw all classes and all races, but no longer from the privileged standpoint, with the result that I was able to understand thoroughly what they were like to themselves and to each other. The horror and loathsomeness of those conditions left a permanent mark upon my character. It went far to destroy my capacity for lyrical expression, or perhaps rather to make impossible the point of view necessary to that kind…
1929 · PDF PAGE 262
262 To my amazement, I saw the doctor preparing to pitch camp. It was inexplicable imbecility. Shouts produced no effect and there was nothing for it but for me to go down. He had chosen a bivouac on bare ice, where there was hardly sufficient level ground to pitch the tents, but it was too late to pack up again, so I had to make the best of it. I asked him the reason for his extraordinary conduct. He replied that there was a rumour that I had broken my leg on a moraine. This was as antecedently unlikely as anything could possibly be; and anyho…
1929 · PDF PAGE 500
…g for something under my pillows, I found my revolver was missing. I did not like it. The evening before, both the boys and I thought we saw a strange man on the island just after dark. We gave chase and thought we saw him slipping through the trees, but failed to report him. I decided to call on my friend the colonel and report. He was very pleased with my solution of the mystery of the alleged signals, and agreed that the incident of the boat looked bad. On his part, he had a new yarn. An old boatman, as steady and sober as one could wish, sw…
1929 · PDF PAGE 134
…e from the womb. Is it strange that he should have been unable to conceive life as aught but ineluctable and fatuous evil? For myself, I saw pleasure as puerile, sorrow as senile; I was ready, when mine hour should arrive, to accept either amicably or dismiss both disdainfully. Meanwhile, I was simply an adept --- wandering round the world in the way adepts have --- bent on picking up any pearls that proved their pedigrees from honest oysters and were guaranteed rejected by swine. So, when I saw Allan, I put my question, referred to above, and …
1929 · PDF PAGE 277
…oomed dull blue-grey above. I noticed various doorways in the walls; also one at the end of the alley; I was in a cul-de-sac. And then I saw, faint glimpses in the gloom, the waving white of native robes. Men were approaching me and I was aware --- through hardly by sight --- that they moved in a semi-military order, in single file. There was noting to alarm me in this it is the habit of natives to march thus. And yet I was pungently aware that some evil was meant. As it happened, I was dressed in dark clothes and my face burnt deep brown. I ef…
1929 · PDF PAGE 391
…stopped instantly, and a few minutes later the original parties to the dispute came to me and begged me to decide between them, for they saw that I was a saint. I habitually observed the prescribed five prayers of the orthodox Mohammedan, and increased my reputation for piety by constantly reciting the Koran as I walked and performing various other practices proper to the highest class of dervish. I soon saw the Neuburg with his shambling gait and erratic gestures, his hangdog look and his lunatic laugh, would damage me in the estimation of the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 159
…neys and enable the reader to clothe with flesh the skeleton of my subsequent wanderings. On the seventh of March I left for Benares and saw the usual sights --- temples, yogis and dancing girls. I had become very cynical and blas about all these things, which only a few months before would have roused me to ecstasies of wonder. But I now made a wry mouth at the sour sub-flavour of everything. My conversation with Allan about Buddhism, and my own meditations, had disenchanted me. Everything was recognized automatically as illusion, calculated …
1929 · PDF PAGE 160
…rming ladies. On the eighteenth I wrote about Orpheus, "The accursed Book III utterly finished. Oh Book IV! On the nineteenth I went and saw the fort with "Major Graham, a prize fool from South Africa". The entry demands emendation. He wasn't a major; his name wasn't Graham; he had never been to South Africa; and he was anything but a fool! His idea was to represent himself as in charge of some Boer prisoners and obtain credit and cash by various misrepresentations. The twentieth and twenty-first were great days in my life. I wrote an essay whi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 94
…a way that struck me as ugly. It was no affair of mine and I did not want to be late. But even as I changed my course to avoid the mob I saw that their game was to reinforce half a dozen roughs who were surrounding a doorway and hustling one of the proctors. My immediate impulse was to gloat upon the evil that had befallen my natural enemy, for until that moment my absurd shyness had prevented me from realizing my relations with the authorities. I had timidly accepted the conventional chaff, but now almost before that first thought was formulat…
1929 · PDF PAGE 551
…ys enjoying the beauties of the Riviera --- it was her first escape from England. On that point only did I try to influence Sullivan. He saw that I was right and grudgingly agreed to give the poor child a few days' enjoyment. With this exception I concentrated my whole energy on impressing Sullivan with the supreme importance to science of The Book of the Law. I further offered to prove the efficacy of its formulae by developing him within three months into a first-rate man. I repeated my invariable epitome, "Every man and every woman is a star…