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Page 102 of 1041929 · PDF PAGE 322
…self-shining (my idea after all!) came forth and put his hands over mine, saying: "I receive thee into the Order of ---." I came back to earth in a cradle of flame. I was thus formally received among the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order on the astral plane. It was the natural sequel to the passage of the Abyss. I was careful not to presume on a mere vision. Superb as the experience was, I would not allow it to turn my head. I am almost morbidly sensitive about my responsibility in such matters. No more fatal mistake can be made than to grasp af…
1929 · PDF PAGE 478
478 For some time I had been contemplating the military situation in its largest sense. I had been thinking of water, air and earth as units. I had been at some pains to study the question of the necessary limitations of the three arms of war. I knew the history of Napoleon gazing glumly across the Channel, after his triumphant snatch at Europe. I had written a paper in The Fatherland called "The Future of the Submarine". I pointed out that hardly anyone had believed in the naval value of these craft until three British cruisers were sunk in fi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 399
…ng, but no one knows their import. Every question is answered in terms which imply ineluctable doom, every hope instantly crushed to the earth by despair against which no appeal can possibly succeed. All aspiration, all ambition ends equally in death. Help is sought from behind the veil where, as has been supposed, is a shrine upon whose altar dwells the unknown god. But the veil is rent, all is empty, and the chief officer declares, "Alas, there is no god!" An invocation is made that god may appear and the veil is rent from within. A figure is…
1906 · PDF PAGE 60
…tood in the King’s Chamber, by the tomb of slain Osiris, in the Pyramid and looked down the Great Gallery, deep, deep into the hollow of earth; grand gloom burned royally therein ; I was well hid in the shadow ; here I realised myself to be in that sepulchral sleep wherein were mirrored all these things of mystery. So the long passage steeply sliding ever up to my feet where I stood in the emptiness ; at last asure abiding only in absolute ceasing of all sense, and all perceived or understood or knowable; thus, purple and intense, I beheld the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 584
…nd which should eventually enable the race to strike off the fetters of mortality and transcend the limitations of its entanglement with earth. I continued my researches in many other lines of Magick, from the preparation of a new edition of Liber 777 with an elaborate explanation of each column and a further analysis of the Yi King, to such matters as the critical observation of success in the Operation of the IX° O.T.O.
1907 · PDF PAGE 229
… the bosom of Nephthys, so that for a while the world lies fallow. It is in feiling to see this constant fume of incense rising from the earth that pessimistic philosophies make their grand fundamental error: in that, and in assuming the very point in dispute, the nature of the laws of other worlds and the prospects of the individual soul. Confess, O subtle author, that thou thyself art even now in the same trap! Willingly, reader; these slips happen when, although one cannot prove to others, one knows.! Thou too shalt know, an thou wilt :—ask …
1929 · PDF PAGE 345
…attainable." Love being the sublimation of the human ego, it follows that the ego itself must be surrendered. The limitations of life on earth are intolerable. The consciousness is unendurable for all those who have begun to understand the universe. Man is so infinitesimally inane, yet he feels himself capable of such colossal attainment. My twelve months of creative spurt reached a climax in February 1908, when I wrote the five books of The World's Tragedy in five consecutive days at Eastbourne. This is beyond all question the high- water mark…
1929 · PDF PAGE 413
…gasus continued its tameless spurt. One after the other I wrote "The Electric Silence", a fairy-story summary of my magical career; "The Earth", a short essay on her, both as planet and as element, in which I express my filial and conjugal relation with her. It is an ecstatic dithyramb. Finally I wrote "Snowstorm". This is a play in three acts, but once again I have tried to introduce a new artistic form. Leila Waddell was to play the part of the heroine, but as she was incapable of speaking on the stage, I had to write her part as a series of …
1929 · PDF PAGE 19
…, though he always thought blackmail too risky and slander a tactical error1. No more cruel fanatic, no meaner villain, ever walked this earth. My father, wrong-headed as he was, had humanity and a certain degree of common-sense; he had a logical mind and never confused spiritual with material issues. He could never have believed, like my uncle, that the cut and colour of "Sunday clothes" could be a matter of importance to the Deity. Having decided that faith and not works was essential to salvation, he could not attach any vital importance to …
1929 · PDF PAGE 222
…o soul. Nor is a man rich while he confines his purchases to things which are useful. The love of my wife had made me the richest man on earth and developed my human soul to its full stature. I could afford to build a temple to love, and that of course had to be stupendous, useless and immortal. I made one disconcerting discovery, though not till long afterwards; this: that the erotic poetry does not spring from supreme satisfaction. Indeed, my life was a perfect lyric and left no surplus energy to overflow into words. I wrote nothing. The temp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 461
… attempt to suppress everything that suggests self-indulgence. The policy is disastrous. We should found society upon a caste of "men of earth", sons of the soil, sturdy, sensual, stubborn and stupid, unemasculated by ethical or intellectual education, but guided in their evolution by the intelligent governing classes towards an ideal of pure animal perfection. In such a substratum
1905 · PDF PAGE 231
…life, travel, and study have taught me, to wit: the Origin of Religions. I take it that there have always, or nearly always, been on the earth those whom Councillor von Eckartshdusen,* the SvAmi Vivekananda® and their like, call 1 See their original documents, fairly enough translated in ‘‘ Real History of the Rosicru- cians,” by A. If. Waite. 2 Hindu sacred books. 3 The law. 4 Author of the ‘‘Cloud upon the Sanctuary,” a profound mystical treatise. 5 A well-known Indian mystic, ‘ Raja Yoga.” author of ‘Coreat spiritual giants” (can there be an…
1929 · PDF PAGE 254
…bitter bondage. The windless Ganges stank of putrefaction. It was not even the stench of rotting vegetation. It seemed as if it were the earth itself which was decaying. A more fantastic and more frightful sight I have never seen. We crossed this tartarean river in a steamer and the actual breadth may be estimated from the fact that dinner is served on board. It was a bad dinner, too; it completed the hellishness of the scene. One lands. The eternal funeral march of the train is resumed. The heat of the night is stifling. The waning moon --- wh…
1929 · PDF PAGE 80
… meant to cut him and our destinies drew apart. It has been my lifelong regret, for a nobler and purer comradeship never existed on this earth, and his influence might have done much to temper my subsequent trials. Nevertheless, the fragrance of that friendship still lingers in the sanctuary of my soul. That eucharist of the spirit reminds me constantly that the one ingredient necessary to my aesthetic development was supplied by the gods at the one period in my life when it could profitably be introduced into my equipment. {149} 18 During the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 350
…f selective study. One of the few gleams of intelligence shown in the works of Conan Doyle is where Sherlock Holmes is ignorant that the earth goes round the sun and, on being told, says that he will at once try to forget it. The case chosen exhibits the chooser as imbecile, for elementary astronomy is certainly important to the detective. But the general idea is sound.
1929 · PDF PAGE 580
…able to withstand the call of his own soul to be true to himself and take the consequence. His way became suddenly clear. He was on this earth with one object and one object only; he must devote his energies exclusively to the welfare of mankind; in other words, to establishing the Law of Thelema. He cabled and wrote, putting himself entirely at my disposal. I accepted and told him to come straight to Cefalu and work with me. He did so, arriving on April 20th, and has since that time been exclusively occupied in collaboration in the Great Work.
1929 · PDF PAGE 284
…and the other. Each wavelet was caused by certain physical conditions and the effect of the total was to slow down the revolution of the earth. But neither the socalled transitory, nor the so-called permanent, phenomenon was ultimately intelligible. Further, what I called "I" was simply a machine which recorded the impact of various phenomena. I wrote, "About now I may count my speculative criticism of the reason as not only proved and understood, but realized." And the following day, "the misery of this is simply sickening; --- I can write no …
1929 · PDF PAGE 128
…r into conversation with them. Travel under their guidance to the particular part of the universe which you desire to explore. Return to earth. Cause the Body of Light to coincide spatially with the physical. Reconnect them, using the sign of Harpocrates. Resume normal consciousness. Record the experience. Test its value by the critical methods advocated in The Equinox. After only a few such journeys I found myself much stronger on the wing that my tutor. He was always getting into trouble. Demoniac forms would threaten the circle. He tired eas…
1929 · PDF PAGE 382
…are contained in the Watch Towers themselves; but (most disconcerting disenchantment!) they are identified with various countries of the earth, Styria, Illyria, etc., as if aire simply meant clime. I have always maintained the first definition. I suspect Kelly of finding Dee unsupportable at times, with his pity, pedantry, credulity, respectability and lack of humour. I could {612} understand that he broke out and made fun of the old man by spouting nonsense. The genuineness of these Keys, altogether apart from any critical observation, is guar…
1929 · PDF PAGE 485
…ility of the accounts which my queries elicited, determined me, like the man in the gospel, to hear and see for myself. I ran the fox to earth in a vast wooden tabernacle; I forget what won by a narrow margin on points; and when he came to New York where they had built a barn bigger than the Albert Hall for the purpose, he could not even get an audience. Beelzebub had the best of every round. Shrewd to the last, he retired from the ring and left Lucifer with the laurels. He had had a great time and had made his pile. I suppose, at this hour, he…