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…lanced by idleness. Eros gives place to x\nteros. Not one man in a thousand makes even an apparent escape from the commonplace of animal life. Birth is sorrow ; Life is sorrow ; Sorrowfiil are old age, disease, and death; But resurrection is the greatest misery of all.
…nd which protects the Magician from the elements; it is the silence and secrecy with which he works, the hiding of himself in the occult life of Magick and Meditation. This is the "going away into the wilderness " which we find in the lives of all men of the highest types of greatness. And it is also the withdrawing of one's self from life as such. In another sense it is the " Aura " of the Magician, that invisible egg or sheath which surrounds him. This " Aura " must be shining, elastic, impenetrable, even by the light, that is, by any partial…
… of whims; but once organization has taken place it is sacred. As Blake says: "Everything that lives is holy"; and hence the creation of life is the most sacred of tasks. It does not matter very much to the creator what it is that he creates; there is room in the universe for both the spider and the fly. It is from the rubbish-heap of Choronzon that one selects the material for a god ! This is the ultimate analysis of the Mystery of Redemption, and is possibly the real reason of the existence (if existence it can be called) of form, or, if you …
…row,' and so represents the aspiration itself; it is the arrow that cleaves the rainbow. This arrow is "Temperance" in the Taro; it is a life equally balanced and direct which makes our work possible; yet this life itself must be sacrificed! In the burning up of these things arise in our imagination those terrifying or alluring phantasms which throng the " Astral Plane." This smoke represents the " Astral Plane," which lies between the ( . j ' Note that there are two arrows: the Divine shot downward, the human upward. I The former is the Oil, t…
…he Geologist estimate the age of what lies beneath the chalk unless he have a piece of knowledge totally un- connected with geology, the life-history of the animals of whom that chalk is the remains? This then is a very great difficulty for the Magician. He cannot possibly have all experience, and though he may console himself philo- sophically with the reflection that the Universe is conterminous with such experience as he has, he will find it grow at such a pace during the'early years of his life that he may almost be tempted to believe in th…
…th Magick. Philosophy is the enemy of Magick. Philosophy assures us that after all nothing matters, and that che sara sara. In practical life, and Magick is the most practical of the Arts of life, this difficulty does not occur. It is useless to argue with a man who is running to catch a train that he may be destined not to catch it; he just runs, and if he could spare breath would say " Blow destiny! " It has been said earlier that the real Magical Will must be toward the highest attainment, and this can never be until the flowering of the Mag…
…mixture of gases.' The Sword, necessary as it is to the Beginner, is but a crude weapon. ' The Oxygen in the air would be too fierce for life ; it must be largely diluted with the inert nitrogen. The rational mind supports life, but about seventy-nine per cent, of it not only refuses itself to enter into combination, but prevents the remaining twenty-one per cent, from doing so. Enthusiasms are checked; the intellect is the great enemy of devotion. One of the tasks of the Magician is to manage somehow to separate the Oxygen and Nitrogen in his …
…t Fertile Mother Nature. Ama. The Great Mother not yet fertile. A?noufi. The God Amen = Zeus = Jupiter, etc., etc. Ankh. The Symbol of " Life." A form of the Rosy Cross. 6*6'^Equinox III. Apophis. The Serpent-God who slew Osiris. See Equinox III. Babalon., Our Lady. 5tv Equinox V, The Vision and the \'oice, 14th Aethyr. Babe of the Abyss. See Equinox VIII, Temple of Solomon. Bhagavadij^ita. Sacred Hymn of India, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold in the "Song Celestial." Bi7iah. Understanding, the 3rd "emanation"' of the Absolute. Caditceus. The Wa…
…ortunity for crucial assistance to a pupil. However dull the drudgery, it should be undergone. If it were possible to regret anything in life, which is fortunately not the case, it would be the hours wasted in fruitful practices which might have been more profitably employed on sterile ones : for NEMO ^ in tending his garden seeketh not to single out the flower that shall be NEMO after him. And we are not told that NEMO might have used other things than those which he actually does use; it seems possible that if he had not the acid or the knife…
…d have a thorough grounding in classics, mathematics and science; also enough general knowledge of modern languages and of the shifts of life to enable him to travel in any part of the world with ease and security. History and geography he can pick up as he wants them; and what should interest him most in any subject is its links with some other subject, so that his Pantacle may not lack what painters call " com- position." He will find that, however good his memory may be, ten thousand impressions enter his mind for every one that it is able t…
… to his office and slaves under a more cruel taskmaster than the meanest of the workmen in his pay; he decides to retire, and finds that life is empty. The end has been swallowed up in the means. Only those are happy who have desired the unattainable. All possessions, the material and the spiritual alike, are but dust. Love, sorrow, and compassion are three sisters who, if they seem freed from this curse, are only so because of their relation to The Unsatisfied. Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and the true artist, l…
…sword, with rack and stake, pro- duced this "belief," which is contrary to, and destructive of, all real religious experience. The whole life of Frater Perdurabo is now devoted to seeing that you obtain this living experience of Truth for, by, and in yourselves! SoROR ViRAKAM (Mary d'Este Sturges).
no it should be aided in every moment of life by endeavouring to estimate occurrences at their true value. Their relativity in particular must be carefully considered. Your toothache does not hurt any one outside a very small circle. Floods in China mean to you nothing but a paragraph in the news- paper. The destruction of the world itself would have no significance in Sirius. One can hardly imagine even that the astronomers of Sirius could perceive so trifling a disturbance. Now considering that Sirius itself is only, as far as you know, but o…
…ust be wielded to gain admission to the palace, it cannot be worn at the marriage feast. One might say that the Pantacle is the bread of life, and the Sword the knife which cuts it up. One must have ideas, but one must criticize them. The Sword, too, is that weapon with which one strikes terror into the demons and dominates them. One must keep the Ego Lord of the impressions. One must not allow the circle to be broken by the demon; one must not allow any one idea to carry one away. It will readily be seen how very elementary and false all this …
…ree objects of study were successively Nature, God, and Man. The duality of consciousness is also sometimes represented; and the Tree of Life itself may be figured therein, or the categories. An emblem of the Great Work should be added. But the Pantacle will be im- perfect unless each idea is contrasted in a balanced manner with its opposite, and unless there is a necessary connection between each pair of ideas and every other pair. The Neophyte will perhaps do well to make the first sketches for his Pantacle very large and complex, subsequentl…
…ctim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon. How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices.
…irst and the Last, the One and the Many, since in this Oil they are One. These oils taken together represent therefore the whole Tree of Life. The ten Sephiroth are blended into the perfect gold. This Oil cannot be prepared from crude myrrh, cinnamon, and galangal. The attempt to do so only gives a brown mud with which the oil will not mix. These substances must be themselves refined into pure oils before the final combination. This perfect Oil is most penetrating and subtle. Gradually it will spread itself, a glistening film, over every object…
…ny known heat; the lightest of those elements w^hich occur in the solid state in nature; the essential constituent of all known forms of life. It has been treated wnth nitre, whose potassium has the violet flame of Jupiter, the father of all, whose nitrogen is that inert element which by proper combination becomes a constituent of all the most explosive bodies known; and oxygen, the food of fire. This fire is blown upon by the Magician ; this blaze of destruction has been kindled by his word and by his will. Into this Fire he casts the Incense,…
by wise men of old; they have made a Science of Life com- plete and perfect; and they have given to it the name of MAGIC K. It is the chief secret of the Ancients, and if the keys have never been actually lost, they have certainly been little used.^ Again, the confusion of thought caused by the ignorance of the people who did not understand it has discredited the whole subject. It is now our task to re-establish this science in its perfection. To do this we must criticize the Authorities; some of them have made it too complex, others have compl…
…Magician from above. It is of velvet for the softness of that divine kiss, and crimson for that it is the very blood of God which is its life. The band of gold is the eternal circle of perfection. The three pentagrams symbolize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, while the hexagram represents the Magician him- self. Ordinarily, pentagrams represent the microcosm, hexagrams the macrocosm; but here the reverse is the case, because in this Crown of Perfection, that which is below has become that which is above, and that which is above has be…