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Page 1 of 31996 · PDF PAGE 173
174 The Law is for All It is we of Thelema who truly love and respect Woman, who hold Her sinless and shameless even as we are; and those who say that we despise Her are those who shrink from the flash of our falchions1 as we strike from Her limbs their foul fetters. 1 [A broad, curved mediaeval sword.] Do we call Woman Whore? Ay, Verily and Amen, She is that; the air shudders and burns as we shout it, exulting and eager. O ye! Was not this your sneer, your vile Whisper that scorned Her and shamed Her? Was not “Whore” the truth of Her, the titl…
1996 · PDF PAGE 172
Chapter III A Verse 55 173 woman’s nature as seen by the clear eyes of those who would lose money if they misjudged her; and they are loathsomely revolting to read. Her mental and moral characteristics are those of the parrot and the monkey. Her physiology and pathology are hideously disgusting, a sickening slime of uncleanliness. Her virgin life is a sick ape’s, her sexual life a drunken sow’s, her mother life all bulging filmy eyes and sagging udders. These are the facts about “innocence;” to this has man’s Chris tian Endeavour dragged her w…
1996 · PDF PAGE 127
… tity of Hadit with the Dwarf-Soul to those who possess— eyesight! 52. There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter. Commentary: Mohammed struck at the root of the insane superstition of tabu with his word: “Women are your field; go in unto them as ye will.”1 He only struck half the blow. …
1996 · PDF PAGE 177
…degraded her in her own eyes, and in his. Let him attend to his own particular business, to redeem himself—he has surely his hands full! Woman will save herself if she be but left alone to do it. I see it! I, the Beast, who have seen—who see—Space splendid with stars; who have seen—who see—the Body of our Lady Nuit, all-pervading; and therein swallowed up, to have found—to find—no soul that is not wholly of Her. Woman! thou drawest us upward and onward for ever; and every woman is one among women, of Woman; one star of Her stars. 1 See “Liber D…
1996 · PDF PAGE 34
…O Ankh-af-na-khonsu! 15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men. 16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight. 17. But ye are not so chosen. 18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent! 19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them! 20. The key of…
1996 · PDF PAGE 171
…omen under Christianity are kept virgin for the market as Strasbourg geese are nailed to boards till their livers putrefy. The nature of woman has been corrupted, her hope of a soul thwarted, her proper pleasure balked, and her mind poisoned, to titillate the jaded palates of senile bankers and ambassadors. Why do men insist on “innocence” in women? 1. To flatter their vanity. 2. To give themselves the best chance of (a) escaping vene real disease, (b) propagating their noble selves. 3. To maintain power over their slaves by their possession o…
1996 · PDF PAGE 176
…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 accord it. The modern woman is not going to be dupe, slave, and victim any more; the woman who gives herself up freely to her own enjoyment, without asking recompense, will earn the respect of her brothers, and will openly despise her “chaste” or venal sisters…
1996 · PDF PAGE 199
…8 The Law is for All 15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men. 16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight. 17. But ye are not so chosen. 18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent! 19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them! 20. The key of…
1996 · PDF PAGE 174
…er with a rival when her service had blasted her beauty. Most masterful man, yet most cunning, was not thy supreme stratagem to band the woman’s own sisters against her, to use their knowledge of her psychology and the cruelty of their jeal ousies to avenge thee on thy slave as thou thyself hadst neither wit nor spite to do? And Woman, weak in body, and starved in mind; woman, morally fettered by Her heroic oath to save the race, no care of cost, helpless and hard, endured these things, endured from age to age. Hers was no loud spectacular sac…
1996 · PDF PAGE 175
…ges, and she hath tamed them thus. Her silence was the token of her triumph. But now the Word of Me the Beast is this; not only art thou Woman, sworn to a purpose not thine own; thou art thyself a star, and in thyself a purpose to thyself. Not only mother of men art thou, or whore to men; serf to their need of Life and Love, not sharing in their Light and Liberty; nay, thou art Mother and Whore for thine own pleasure; the Word I say to Man I say to thee no less: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”! Ay, priest, ay, lawyer, ay, cens…
1996 · PDF PAGE 179
…y is ever the child; the wholesome atti tude of the clean simple mind, free from all complications alien to Love, assures it. Just as a woman’s body is deformed and diseased by the corset demanded by Jaganath Fashion, so is her soul by the compression of convention, which is a fashion as fitful, arbitrary, and senseless as that of the man-milliner, though they call him God, and his freakish Fiat pass for Everlasting Law. The English Bible sanctions the polygamy and concubinage of Abraham, Solomon and others, the incest of Lot, the wholesale ra…
1996 · PDF PAGE 41
…on is an explosive machine, with pyrotechnic effects; but these are only incidentals. Laws against adultery are based upon the idea that woman is a chattel, so that to make love to a married woman is to deprive the husband of her services. It is the frankest and most crass state ment of a slave-situation. To us, every woman is a star. She has therefore an absolute right to travel in her own orbit. There is no
1996 · PDF PAGE 24
…ith the next. The “company of heaven” is Mankind, and its “unveiling” is the assertion of the independent godhead of every man and every woman! Further, as Khabs1 (see verse 8) is “Star,” there is a further meaning; this Book is to reveal the Secret Self of a man, i.e. to initiate him. 1 [Usually khaib in modern Egyptian transliteration.] 2 [A Crowley diary from 1919 e.v.; the relevant passage is quoted on p. 26.] 3. Every man and every woman is a star. Commentary: This thesis is fully treated in The Book of Wisdom or Folly. Its main statement …
1996 · PDF PAGE 180
…unced the respect of society, and found a way to drive the wolf of hunger from her door. Her chance is come! In any Abbey of Thelema any woman is welcome; there she is free to do her will, and held in honour for the doing. The child of love is a star, even as all are stars; but such an one we specially cherish; it is a trophy of battle fought and won! 57. Despise also all cowards; professional soldiers who dare not fight, but play; all fools despise! Commentary: To fight is the right and duty of every male, as of every woman to rejoice in his s…
1996 · PDF PAGE 83
…e” should be taken in its widest sense as meaning that which brings out the soul. Climate, soil, and race change conditions; each man or woman must find and choose the fit intoxicant. Thus hashish in one or other of its forms seems to suit the Moslem, to go with dry heat; opium is right for the Mongol; whiskey for the dour temperament and damp cold climate of the Scot. Sex-expression, too, depends on climate and so on, so that we must interpret the Law to suit a Socrates, a Jesus, and a Burton, or a Marie Antoinette and a de Lamballe, as well a…
1996 · PDF PAGE 84
Chapter I A Verses 62—63 85 whose function is to bring the Soul to the realization of its own glory: Dionysus, Aphrodite, Apollo—Wine, Woman, and Song. The ancients, both in the highest civilizations, as in Greece and Egypt, and in the most primitive savagery, as among the Buriats and the Papuans, were well aware of this, and made their reli gious ceremonies orgia, “works.” Puritan foulness, failing to understand what was happening, degraded the word “orgies” to mean debauches. It is the old story of the Fox who lost his tail. If you cannot do…
1996 · PDF PAGE 52
…o on behalf of psederastic passion. Out of the Court there slunk Mark Antony, his toga to his face, one of the legion of lost souls that woman had withered; behind him groped blind Samson, disinherited Adam, feeling his way along the table where they had piled countless papyri writ with woes of kings and sages woman-wrecked, and many a map of towns and temples torn and trampled beneath the feet of Love, their ashes smouldering still, and smoky with song to witness how Astarte’s breath had kindled and consumed them. Extinguished empires owned th…
1996 · PDF PAGE 42
…vage 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, are saying that they will not marry English girls…
1996 · PDF PAGE 26
Chapter I A Verses 3—4 27 circumference inwards. This is what is meant when we say that woman has no soul. It explains fully the difference between the sexes.1 1 [Surviving fragment from “The Book of the Great Auk.” See also The Book ofThoth, pp. 15-16, and Part III of Book 4, Parts I-IV, rev. ed., p. 248n.] 2 [The “Star-Sponge” Vision was usually characterized by Crowley as “Nothingness with Twinkles”; see p. 79.] 3 [A lake in Bristol, New Hampshire.] 4 [A lengthy technical commentary to this verse, omitted by Dr. Wilkin son, is given as Appe…
1996 · PDF PAGE 68
…ven beyond range of malice. These points are obvious enough, if applied to the ordinary affair of breeding children. One needs the right woman, and the right conditions for her. It applies even more closely to other acts, for woman is pro tected by generations of biological adaptation, whereas spiritual children are more easily diseased and deformed, being of subtler and more sensitive matter. So infinitely varied are the possibilities of creation that each adept must work out each problem for him self as best he can. There are magical method…