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Page 1 of 31996 · PDF PAGE 114
…ine item reporting the massacre of Arme nians by the Turks, the first wholesale ethnic genocide of the century.] 25. Ye are against the people, O my chosen! Commentary: By “the people” is meant that canting, whin ing, servile breed of whipped dogs which refuses to admit its deity. The mob is always afraid for its bread and butter—when its tyrants let it have any butter—and now and then the bread has 60% substitutes of cattle-fodder.1 2 So, being afraid, it dare not strike. And when the trouble begins, we aristocrats of Freedom, from the castl…
1996 · PDF PAGE 130
Chapter II £ Verse 58 131 education has aided nobody. It has imposed an unwarrantable constraint on the people it was intended to benefit; it has been asi nine presumption on the part of the intellectuals to consider a smattering of mental acquirements of universal benefit. It is a form of sectarian bigotry. We should recognize the fact that the vast majority of human beings have no ambition in life beyond mere ease and animal happiness. We should allow these people to fulfil their destinies without interference. We should give every opportuni…
1996 · PDF PAGE 84
…his tail. If you cannot do anything, call it impossible; or, if that be evidently absurd, call it wicked! It is critics who deny poetry, people without capacity for Ecstasy and Will who call Mysticism moonshine and Magick delusion. It is manless old cats, geldings, and psychopaths, who pretend to detest Love, and persecute Free Women and Free Men. Verbotenism has gone so far in certain slave-communities that the use of wine is actually prohibited by law!! I wish here to emphasize that the Law of Thelema definitely enjoins us, as a necessary act…
1996 · PDF PAGE 100
…are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk. Commentary: This idea is confirmed. Those who sorrow are not real people at all, not “stars”—for the time being. The fact of their being “poor and sad” proves them to be “shadows,” who “pass & are done.” The “lords of the earth” are those who are doing their Will. It does not necessarily mean people with coro nets and automobiles; there are plenty of such people who are the most sorrowful slaves in the world. The sole test of one’s lordship is to know what one’s true Will i…
1996 · PDF PAGE 42
…sary to set up such tabus in small communities, savage tribes, where the wife was nothing but a general servant, where the safety of the people depended upon a high birth-rate. But today woman is economically inde pendent, becomes more so every year. The result is that she instantly asserts her right to have as many or as few men or babies as she wants or can get; and she defies the world to interfere with her. More power to her—elbow! The War has seen this emancipation flower in four years. Primitive people, the Australian troops for example,…
1996 · PDF PAGE 206
…e another with burning hearts; on the low men trample in the fierce lust of your pride, in the day of your wrath. 25. Ye are against the people, O my chosen! 26. I am the secret Serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one. 27. There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he…
1996 · PDF PAGE 37
…nto us the rituals; write unto us the law! Commentary: Law, in the common sense of the word, should be a formulation of the customs of a people, as Euclid’s proposi tions are the formulation of geometrical facts. But modern knav ery conceived the idea of artificial law, as if one should try to square the circle by tyranny. Legislators try to force the people to change their customs, so that the “business men” whose greed they are bribed to serve may increase their profits. “Law,” in Greek, is NOMOC, from NEMO, and means strictly “anything ass…
1996 · PDF PAGE 36
Chapter I i Verses 26—32 37 Each individual must be left free to follow his own path! America is peculiarly insane on these points; her people are desperately anxious to make the Sinhalese wear furs, and the Tibetans vote, and the whole world chew gum, utterly dense to the fact that most other nations, especially the French and British, regard “American institutions” as the lowest savagery, and forgetful or ignorant of the circumstances that the original brand of American freedom—which really was Freedom—contained the precept to leave other peo…
1996 · PDF PAGE 109
…935), baseball player turned Revivalist preacher, noted for his flamboyant style and crusading zeal.] Wine and strange drugs do not harm people who are doing their will; they only poison people who are cancerous with Origi nal Sin. In Latin countries, where Sin is not taken seriously, and sex-expression is simple, wholesome, and free, drunkenness is a rare accident. It is only in Puritan countries, where self-analysis, under the whip of a coarse bully like Billy Sunday,1 2 brings the hearer to “conviction of sin,” that he hits first the “trail…
1996 · PDF PAGE 179
…ity after one is divorced. Thus we find that almost the only love-affairs which breed no annoyance, and leave no scar, are those between people who have accepted the Law of Thelema, and broken for good with the tabus of the slave-gods. The true artist, loving his art and nothing else, can enjoy a series of spontaneous liaisons, all his life long, yet never suffer himself, or cause any other to suffer. Of such liaisons Beauty is ever the child; the wholesome atti tude of the clean simple mind, free from all complications alien to Love, assures …
1996 · PDF PAGE 129
…ast bulk of humanity is obsessed by an abject fear of freedom; the principal objections hitherto urged against my Law have been those of people who cannot bear to imagine the horrors which would result if they were free to do their own wills. The sense of sin, shame, self distrust, this is what makes folk cling to Christianity-slavery. People believe in a medicine just insofar as it is nasty; the meta physical root of this idea is in sexual degeneracy of the masochis tic type. Now “the Law is for all”; but such defectives will refuse it, and…
1996 · PDF PAGE 103
…ti mately, “Happiness” wearies itself in the effort to invent fresh images, and becomes disheartened and doubtful of itself. Only a few people have wit enough to proceed to generalization from the failure of a few familiar figures of itself, and recognize that all “actual” forms are imperfect; but such people are apt to turn with disgust from the whole procedure, and to long for the “eternal” state. This state is however incapable of realization, as we know; and the Soul understanding this, can find no good but in “Cessa tion” of all things, …
1996 · PDF PAGE 6
…bjectivity. He was too close to The Book of the Law, on too many levels, to be able to easily write about it, let alone judge what other people might find helpful by way of commentary. He made numerous attempts over the years, only the first of which was published in his lifetime.1 The rest, including the “new” or “long” commentary that comprises the present book — remained unedited in typescript. He produced the first draft of the “new commentary” in 1919 E.v. and more than doubled its length dur ing 1921-22; he later added the occasional not…
1996 · PDF PAGE 45
…e power of asserting one’s right that it will not long be disputed. For by doing so one appeals to the Law. In practice it is found that people who are ready to fight for their rights are respected, and let alone. The slave-spirit invites oppression. 44. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect. Commentary: This verse is best interpreted by defining “pure will” as the true expression of the Nature, the proper or inherent motion of the matter, concerned. It is unnatural to aim at any goal. The…
1996 · PDF PAGE 99
…are not of me; for there is a further secret. 16. I am The Empress & the Hierophant. Thus eleven, as my bride is eleven. 17. Hear me, ye people of sighing! The sorrows of pain and regret Are left to the dead and the dying, The folk that not know me as yet. Commentary: The dead and the dying, who know not Hadit, are in the Illusion of Sorrow. Not being Hadit, they are shadows, puppets, and what happens to them does not matter. If you insist upon identifying yourself with Hecuba, your tears are natural enough. 2 See Book 4, Part III [Chap. 7, §5]…
1996 · PDF PAGE 62
Chapter I a Verse 52 63 clear enough that the sexual peculiarities of people are hiero glyphs, obscure yet not unintelligible, revealing their histories in the first place, in the second, their relations with environment in the present, and, in the third, their possibilities with regard to the modification of the future. In these supremely important verses of The Book of the Law, it becomes clear that Nuit is aware of all these facts, and that she regards them as no less than the combination of the lock of the strong-room of the future. “This”…
1996 · PDF PAGE 122
…xactitude of our ledgers to enable us to dispense with initiative on the one hand and actual transactions on the other. 34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake! Commentary: We are not to calculate, to argue, to criticize; these things lead to division of will and to stagnation. They are shackles of our Going. They hamstring our Pegasus. We are to rise up—to Go—to Love—we are to be awake, alert — Joyous and eager Our tresses adorning, O let us beleaguer The City of Morning!1 1 Crowley, The World’s Tragedy (1910), p. 31, paraphrase; the original…
1996 · PDF PAGE 176
…ted as simply as hunger. Frankness of speech and writing on sexual questions will dispel the ignorance which entraps so many unfortunate people; proper precaution against actual dangers will replace unnecessary and absurd precautions against imaginary or artificial dangers; and the quacks who trade on fear will be put out of business. All this must follow as the Light the night as soon as Woman, true to Herself, finds that She can no longer be false to any man. She must hold Herself and Her Will in honour; and She must compel the world to accor…
1996 · PDF PAGE 123
… feast for life is at a birth; and the feast for death at a death. It is of the utmost importance to make funerals merry, so as to train people to take the proper view of death. The fear of death is one of the great weapons of tyrants, as well as their scourge; and it distorts our whole outlook upon the Universe. 42. A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture! Commentary: To him who realizes Hadit this text needs little comment. It is wondrous, this joy of awakening every morning to the truth of one’s immortal energy and rapture.…
1996 · PDF PAGE 55
…terests resume their proper proportions. We may now inquire why the Book is at pains to admit as to love “when” and “where” we will. Few people, surely, have been seriously worried by restrictions of time and place. One can only think of lovers who live with fearsome families or in inhospitable lodgings, on a rainy night, buffeted from one police-bullied hotel to another. Perhaps this permission is intended to indicate the propriety of performing the sexual act without shame or fear, not waiting for darkness or seeking secrecy, but by daylight …