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Page 1 of 41929 · PDF PAGE 193
… by their mouths foulness and imbecility when the whim takes him. True souls would never seek so ignoble a means of manifesting in earth-life; their ways are holy, and in accord with Nature. While the true soul reincarnates as a renunciation, a sacrifice of its divine life and ecstasy for the sake of redeeming those who are not yet freed from mortal longings, the demon seeks incarnation as a means of gratifying unslaked lusts. Like a dumb beast in pain, the wife of Douglas watched her husband go through his ghastly ritual, with averted face, as…
1929 · PDF PAGE 163
…d humanity; they had not understood that in order to grow one must assimilate oneself with another being, the death of two to create the life of one, in whom the two live once more, transmuted and glorified, the corruptible having put on incorruption. To them incarnation was death; and they did not know that death was life. They were not ready for the Great Adventure. So they stood like tall lilies about the coruscating cone of Light, wondering, doubting, drooping. But at the last came one taller than all the rest, sadder of mien, and lovelier …
1929 · PDF PAGE 147
…ord, mercy!" Arthwait was writhing upon the corpses, horribly twisting, foaming black blood from his lungs. And the old man saw that his life had been an imbecility, that he had taken the wrong path. Brother Onofrio still smiled. "Oh my lord!" cried Vesquit, rising to his feet, "'twere better I should die." The formula of humanity is the willing acceptance [208] of death; and as love, in the male, is itself of the nature of a voluntary death, and therefore a sacrament, so that he who loves slays himself, therefore he who slays himself that life…
1929 · PDF PAGE 202
…rd, and creates a sun. Light interfused with Light, a sparkling spasm Of rainbow radiance, spans the cosmic chasm; Light crystallized in Life, Life coruscating In Light, their mood of magick consummating The miracle of Love, and all the awe Of Need made one with Liberty's one law; A fourfold flower of Godhead, leaf and fruit And seed and blossom of one radiant root, Resolving all the being of its bloom Into the rapture of its own perfume. Star-clustered dew each fibre of that light Wherein all being flashes to its flight! All things that live, …
1929 · PDF PAGE 199
… name, why had she left Lavinia King to explore these dreadful realms — of illusion? of imagination? of darker and deadlier reality than life? It mattered little which; the one thing needful was to turn again to humanity, to the simple sensible life that she had always lived. It was not noble, not wonderful; but it was better than this nightmare of phantoms, cruel and malignant and hideous, this phantasmagoria of damnation. She wrenched herself away; for a moment she lost consciousness completely; then she found herself in her bed at the Villa.…
1929 · PDF PAGE 192
…d burning over a charcoal brazier. [271] Science is gradually being forced round once more to the belief that there is something more in life than its mere chemistry and physics. Those who practise the occult arts have never been in doubt on the subject. The dynamic virtue of living substance does not depart from it immediately at death. Those ideas, therefore, which seek manifestation in life, must do so either by incarnation or by seizing some still living matter which the idea or soul in possession has abandoned. Sorcerers consequently emplo…
1929 · PDF PAGE 201
…stress, Extremes that cancel out in Nothingness. Light thrills through Light, the spindle of desire, Cross upon Cross of elemental Fire; Life circles Life, the Rose all flowers above, And in their intermarriage they are Love. Lo! on each spear of Splendour burns a world Revolving, whirling, crying aloud; and curled About each cosmos, bounding in its course, The sacred Snake, the father of its force, Energized, energizing, self-sustained, Man-hearted, Eagle-pinioned, Lion-maned, Exulting in its splendour as it lashes
1929 · PDF PAGE 87
…m he had admired the year before at a dance — and whom he had craved ever since. "Tell S.R.M.D.," he roared, "that I'm in this thing for life or death; but I ask the girl for a trophy." "You'll get that, or anything else," said Balloch, "if you can put an end to the activities of Mr. Cyril Grey." Abdul Bey rushed off without another word spoken; and Balloch and the Pasha went to the rendezvous appointed. They passed that night and the next day in alternate bouts of drink and sleep. About half-past eight on the following evening the telephone ra…
1929 · PDF PAGE 121
life had recently been manifest. An obvious corollary is that the best bodies are those that have met a violent death, rather than those which have been subjected to illness and decay. Also, it followed that the best corpses of all were those of executed murderers, whose vitality may be assumed as very great — though on this last point Cyril Grey, for one, would have disagreed with him, saying that the most vital people would have too much respect for the principle of life to commit murder in cold blood. However, Dr Vesquit had obtained an appo…
1929 · PDF PAGE 194
craving of her nature, as urgent and devouring as hunger or thirst. Balloch, who had been all his life high-priest of Hecate, had never been present at an evocation of the force that he served. He shuddered — not a little — as the sorcerer recited his surgical exploits; the credentials of the faith of her servant then present before her. He had committed his dastardly crimes [273] wholly for gain, and as a handle for blackmail; the magical significance of the business had not occurred to him at all. His magical work had been almost entirely dir…
1929 · PDF PAGE 15
…l tell you. You have an inexpressible hunger of the soul; you despise earth and its delusions; and you aspire unconsciously to at higher life than anything this planet can offer. "I will tell you something that may convince you of my right to speak. You were born on October the eleventh; so Brother Cyril told me. But he did not tell me the hour; you never told him; it was a little before sunrise." Lisa was taken aback; the mystic had guessed right. "The Order to which I belong," pursued Simon Iff," does not believe anything; it knows, or it dou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 104
…radio-activity, weight and hardness. The difficulty in defining and measuring them lies principally in the subtlety of their relation to life. Living protoplasm is identical with dead protoplasm in all but the fact of life. The Mass is a magical ceremony performed with the object of endowing a material substance with divine virtue; but there is no material difference between the consecrated and the unconsecrated wafer. Yet there is an enormous difference in the moral
1929 · PDF PAGE 206
In her earth-life, too, she became more obviously ill-tempered; and, as to a woman of her type revenge only means one thing, she amused the garrison exceedingly by attempting flirtations. The rule of the Profess-House happened to include the virtue of chastity, which is an active and positive thing, a passion, not that mere colourless abstinence and stagnation which passes in Puritan countries by that [289] name, breeds more wickedness than all the vice on the planet, and, at the best, is shared by clinkers. She was clever enough to see in a fe…
1929 · PDF PAGE 73
… and evil vanish instantly, with Realism and Nominalism, and Free will and [105] Determinism — and all the 'isms' and all the 'ologies'! Life is reduced to mathematical formulae, indeed, as the Victorian scientists rightly wished to do; but at the same time mathematics is restored to her royal pre-eminence as not only the most exact, but the most exalted of the sciences. The intelligible order of things, moreover, becomes natural and inevitable; and such moral problems as the cruelty of organic life return to their real insignificance. The almo…
1929 · PDF PAGE 145
… two first were joined, and the goat as he died was to repeat the miracle wrought in long ages past upon that other victim, by coming to life again humanized by the contact of the ghost of the sorcerer. It is not permissible to describe this ritual in detail; it is too execrably efficient; but the Turk, brought up in a merciful and cleanly religion, with but few stains of savagery upon it, faltered and nigh fainted; only his desire for Lisa, which had become a soul-tempest, held him to the circle. And indeed the brains of them all were awhirl. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 175
somewhat stupid, too, as his main claim is that the body is only an illusion!" "Am I right in suggesting that ordinary life is a mean between these extremes, that the noble man devotes his material wealth to lofty ends, the advancement of science, or art, or some such true ideal; and that the base man does the opposite by concentrating all his abilities on the amassing of wealth?" "Exactly; that is the real distinction between the artist and the bourgeois, or, if you prefer it, between the gentleman and the cad. Money, and the things money can …
1929 · PDF PAGE 36
…is right to be so stern about a trifle?" "Keeping one's word is no trifle. False in one, false in all. Can't you see how simple it makes life for me, never to have to worry about a decision, always to be able to refer everything to a simple standard, my Will? And can't you see how simple it makes life for you, to know that if I once say a thing, I'll do it?" "Yes. I do see. But, oh, Cyril, what agony I passed through that evening!" "That was ignorance," said Simon Iff, "the cause of all suffering. You failed to read him, to be assured that, jus…
1929 · PDF PAGE 71
life which she expected to follow. But she could not know why the old mystic was at so great pains (as he afterwards proved) to make every syllable of his discourse intelligible; for she had not heard his conference with Cyril Grey at the moment when Sister Cybele had called her. "Brother Cyril!" the old mystic had said, "I shall go on — I shall even put more than the necessary care into the work — as if this were victory and not defeat. "I tell you that you will never do anything yourself, still less anything for others, so long as you rely on…
1929 · PDF PAGE 62
…n led the way to a cell cunningly hidden in the wall. There they took seats. Lisa la Giuffria recognized that the critical moment of her life was come upon her. [90]
1929 · PDF PAGE 6
…Ben struck the half hour. Big Ben is far too big to take any notice of anything terrestrial. A change of dynasty is nothing in his young life! "Come in, for the land's sake!" cried Lavinia King. Her quick ear had caught a light knock upon the door. She had hoped for something exciting, but it was only her private tame pianist, a cadaverous individual with the manners of an undertaker gone mad, the morals of a stool-pigeon, and imagining himself a bishop. [13] "I had to wish you many happy returns," he said to Lisa, when he had greeted