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Page 1 of 41929 · PDF PAGE 47
…Will, there would be no collision. Every man and every woman is a star. It is when we get off our orbits that the clashes come. Now if a Thing gets off its orbit, and comes into my sphere of attraction, I absorb it as quietly as possible, and the stars sing together again." "Whew!" said Cyril, and pretended to wipe the sweat from his brow. "But weren't you in danger from that devilish Thing?" asked Lisa, with the memory of a great anxiety. She had trembled like an aspen during the scene in the garden. "The rhinoceros," quoted Simon Iff, "finds …
1929 · PDF PAGE 46
…whole of the Law!" [66] he proclaimed in such a voice as once shook Sinai. Then he threw the rest of the dittany in the direction of the Thing. "By all the powers of the Pentagram!" shouted Cyril Grey; "he's deliberately making a magical link between it and Lisa." He bit his lip, and cursed himself in silence; he knew he had been startled out of prudence. Simon Iff had not noticed the outburst. He quoted "The Book of the Law," "Be strong!" he cried. "Enjoy all things of sense and rapture! There is no god that shall deny thee for this!" The Thin…
1929 · PDF PAGE 108
inconsistent with, the plan of his superior. The defect is inherent in all Black Magic, because that art is itself [154] a thing set up against the Universal Will. If it were not negligibly small, it would destroy the Universe, just as the bomb-throwing Anarchist would succeed in destroying society if he amounted to, say, a third of the population. Now Simple Simon, at this time, did not know Douglas for the enemy General; but he was in the closest possible magical touch with him. For he had absorbed the Thing in the garden into himself and tha…
1929 · PDF PAGE 90
…he late Akbar Pasha. "I wonder how that happened," he said. "However, here is a guess at your epitaph: 'a little learning is a dangerous thing.' I think, Lisa, that we should sup at the Cheval Blanc before we start our walk to Barbizon. It is a long way, especially at night, and we want to cut away to the west so as to avoid Fontainebleau, for the sake of the romance of the thing." Lisa did not mind whether she supped at the White Horse, or on one. She realized that she had hold of a man of strength, wisdom, and foresight, far more than a match…
1929 · PDF PAGE 44
Chapter5 OF THE THING IN THE GARDEN; AND OF THE WAY OF THE TAO "OH, little Brother!" said the old mystic sadly. "How long will it take you to work through this wretched business?" "I have omnipotence at my command, and eternity at my disposal," smiled the boy, using Eliphaz Levi's well-known formula. "I ought to explain," said Simple Simon, turning to Lisa. "This boy is a desperate magician confined within the circle of this forest. His plan is Action; he is all for Magick; give him a Wand and a host of Demons to control, and he is happy. For m…
1929 · PDF PAGE 151
…ther Cyril shook his head "I must explain myself more carefully," he said. "Let me ask you, in the first place, what is the most serious thing in the world." "Religion." "Exactly. Now, what is religion? The consummation of the soul by itself in divine ecstasy. What is life but love, and what is love but laughter? In other words, religion is a joke. There is the spirit of Dionysus and there is the spirit of Pan; but they are twin phases of laughter. Religion is a joke. Now what is the most absurd thing in the world?" "Woman." "Right again. And t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 43
… broke in on the word. "We have a great deal to do," he said sharply, "even before we leave this house. It's pretty dark — and there's a Thing in the garden." [63]
1929 · PDF PAGE 41
…cone goes on. The circle gets bigger and bigger. Suddenly, as the cone goes completely through, snap! "Now, what does the water know? "Nothing about any cone. If it got any idea that the various commotions were caused by a single object, which it would only do if it compared them carefully, noted a regularity of rate of increase in the size of the circle, and so on — in other words, used the scientific method - it would not evolve a theory of a [60] cone, for we must remember that any solid body is to it a thing as wildly inconceivable as a fou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 38
…fitted. "Ah, you cheated. I said, 'slide them.'" "I'm sorry." "On the contrary, you have acted divinely, in the best sense! You took the thing that wouldn't fit out of its world of two into the world of three, put it back, and they all lived happy ever after! "The next thing is this. Everything that exists — everything material — has these three dimensions. These points and lines and surfaces have all a minute extension in some other dimension, or they would be merely things in our imagination. The surface of water, for instance, is merely the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 40
thing as the surface is to the cube. You can't? True; you can't make a definite image of it; but you can form an idea — and if you train yourself to think of this very hard, presently you will get a little closer to it. I'm not going to bother you much longer with this dry theoretical part; I'll only just tell you that a fourth dimension, besides explaining the difficulties of gravitation, and some others, gives us an idea of how it is that there is only a definite fixed number of kinds of things, from which all others are combined. "And now we…
1929 · PDF PAGE 87
…her ordeal would be surrounded by spies; additional men would be placed at all the big terminals of Paris; for Abdul Bey meant to do the thing thoroughly. He would not take a chance; for all his fanatical faith in Douglas, he thought it prudent to provide against the possibility of an error in the chief's occult calculations. Also, his action would prove his zeal. Besides, Cyril might deliberately lay a false trail — was almost sure to play some trick of the sort. Balloch and Akbar Pasha were stationed in a [125] restaurant facing the Gare de L…
1929 · PDF PAGE 45
…ld Brother Cyril do?" "I should take the Magic Sword, make the appropriate symbols, and invoke the Names Divine appurtenant thereto: the Thing, shrivelled and blasted, would go back to those that sent it, screaming in agony, cursing at the gods, ready to turn even on its employers, that they might wail with it in torment." "One of the best numbers on the programme," said Simon Iff. "Now see the other way!" "Yes: if your way is better than that!" cried the girl, her eyes gleaming. "It isn't my way," said the mystic, with a sudden inflection of s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 76
…iful statues, to read only [109] beautiful books. The Mohammedans, again, whose marriage system makes Christian marriage by comparison a thing for cattle, shut up a woman during that period, keep her perfectly quiet and free from the interference of her husband. "This is all very good, but it falls short of Brother Cyril's latest lunacy. As I understand him, he wishes indeed to proceed normally in a physical sense, but to prepare the way by making the heredity, and environment as attractive as possible to one special type of soul, and then — to…
1929 · PDF PAGE 139
… see Vesuvius away to the right. She turned to breast the steep slope between her and the road, when she found herself confronted by something that she could not see. She had only a feeling that it was black, that it was icy cold, and that it wished to take the tablet from her. Her first sentiment was that of acute hatred and repulsion; but the thing, whatever it was, seemed so wretched, that she felt she would like to help it. Then she suddenly glowed hot — the arms of Abdul Bey were round her, and his face was looking into hers. She dropped t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 28
…rted a look at her which compelled her obedience, though she had no idea in the world why she should, or why she shouldn't, do any given thing. She was like one in a strange country; the only thing to do is to conform to the customs as well as one can; and to trust one's guide. "Baby" continued to yell. The Pasha, prepared for the event, whipped a bottle of milk out of his pocket, and she began to suck at it contentedly. "What ridiculous fellows those old alchemists were!" said Cyril to his beloved. "How could they have gone on fooling with the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 236
…te all mutilation, he recognized more than that: he recognized the carcass. This carrion had once been Douglas. Cyril Grey did a strange thing, a thing he had not done for many years: he broke into a strong sobbing. "I know now," he murmured, "that Simon Iff is right. The Way of the Tao!
1929 · PDF PAGE 42
…y have never been settled. The problem of the origin of evil, alone, has quite baffled Theology. "Science advances; we now find that all things are subject to law. There is no need of any mysterious creator, in the old sense; we look for causes in the same order of nature as the effects they produce. We no lounger propitiate ghosts to keep our fires alight. "Now, at last, I and a few others are asking whether the whole universe be not illusion, in exactly the same way as a true surface is an illusion. "Perhaps the universe is a four-dimensional…
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 188
…. No trickery, no manipulation, can alter by the millionth of a milligramme the amount of oxygen in a billion tons of water. No existing thing is ever destroyed or magnified or lessened, though it change its form as it passes from one complexity to another. And if this be true of an atom of carbon, which is but one of the ideas in our minds, how much more is it true of that supremely simple thing which stands behind all thought, the soul of man? Doubt that? The answer comes: Who doubts? [265] The sorcerer is perhaps — at best — trying to create…
1929 · PDF PAGE 77
said, shaking his head; "I sometimes think you're too keen to see your results." "I hate to beat about the bush. I say the thing that can never be forgotten," "Or forgiven, sometimes," said the old man in gentle reproof. "But come, my dear, sit down; he meant truth, after all, and truth cuts only to cure. It's a brutal fact that children used to be born blind, literally by the thousand, because it wasn't quite nice to publish the facts about certain diseases; and precautions against them were called 'heartless experiments.' What Cyril is asking…