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Page 113 of 1211944 · PDF PAGE 124
…nd painted (usually on silk, and repeated in varying MISSING TEXT? that the tearing asunder is a crushing together.) All the double phenomena are only two ways of looking at a single phenomenon; and the single phenomenon is Peace. There is no sense in my words or in my thoughts. “Faces half‐formed arose.” This is the meaning of that passage; they are attempts to interpret Chaos. But Chaos is Peace Cosmos is the War of the Rose and the Cross. That was a “half‐formed face” that I said then. All images are useless. Yea, as in a looking‐glass, so i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 108
…sed are they that put their trust in Him." (10) To uplift the Cross of Sacrifice and Suffering; and to cause my Light so to shine before men that they may glorify my Father which is in Heaven. Furthermore, I most solemnly promise and swear: to acquire this Holy Science in the manner prescribed in the Book of Abra-Melin, without omitting the least imaginable thing of its contents; not to gloss or comment in any way on that which may be or may not be, not to use this Sacred Science to offend the Great God, not to work ill unto my neighbour: to co…
1944 · PDF PAGE 43
… superstitions cannot be explained so simply. It seems more probable that they arose from the unscientific habit (extremely common among men of sci‐ ence) of generalising from too few facts. It might happen by chance that on half a dozen occa‐ sions within a short period, a hunter, setting out at Full Moon, was killed. The old fallacy of Post hoc propter hoc would come in; and the village would say, “It is unlucky to go out hunting at Full Moon”. This would gather force, as it was repeated through the generations, by virtue of mental indolence;…
1929 · PDF PAGE 204
…oistered seclusion of the galleried pines Is mine today; these groves are fit for Pan --- O rich with Bacchus frenzy and his wine's Atonement for the infinite woes of man! And here his mighty and reverend high priest Bade me good cheer, an eager acolyte, Poured the high wine, unveiled the mystic feast ... Roast lamb and an excellent Chablis which had been sent to him by Lord Northcliffe --- thus does the poet transfigure conceptions apparently commonplace. I was much touched by Henley's kindness in inviting me. I have never lost {344} the child…
1929 · PDF PAGE 379
…into the house. He followed, swearing to kill her. I made a beeline for the drawing-room poker, but the room was so full of trumpery ornaments that there was no room to swing it. So we clinched. We fought our way to the hall. I finally got him down on the staircase. He kicked the balustrade to splinters; but I held on. Luckily, his hair was very long, so that I could knock his head on the edge of a stair whenever he tried to break away. I begged Mrs Gnaggs and the servants to send for help, but they were much too interested in watching the scra…
1929 · PDF PAGE 445
…ich they profess to adore more intelligently than the mob because it represents the descent of the Holy Spirit into the midst of that tremendous name of God which only occurs in {704} their ritual because of its power to annihilate the universe if pronounced correctly1. The intelligence of the average mason may be gauged by the following quotation from the R.A.M. degree. The twentieth century! --- and such stuff is solemnly offered as instruction to grown men! Some have doubted whether the Ark was capable of containing two of every sort of crea…
1906 · PDF PAGE 243
…sion is equal to 1; whatever X may represent, if it be raised to the power of 0 (this meaning mathematically ‘‘if it be extended in no dimension or category’), the result is Unity, and the unknown factor X is eliminated. This is the Advaitist idea of the future of man; his personality, bereft of all its qualities, disappears and is lost, while in its place arises the impersonal Unity, The Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity - adoring followers”of Mohammed. (To the Musulman fakir, Allah is by no means a personal God.) Unity is thus un…
1906 · PDF PAGE 280
TIME religion, though we lament the paradoxical follies of its best modern professors ! Myst. A truce to all controversy, then. How shall we obtain the best from life? It is this form of the question that should give you a clue to my goal. Scept. It is so difficult to determine whether Sherlock Holmes? is dead or no that I will take no risks. But the answer to your query is obvious. He “eves the longest who remembers most. Myst. Insufficient. There are lives full of the dreariest incident, like a farmyard novel, or a window in Thrums, or the au…
1929 · PDF PAGE 32
32 the time I was genuinely sorry for the animal; I simply forced myself to carry out the experiment in the interest of pure science. The combination of innocence, ignorance, knowledge, ingenuity and high moral principle seems extraordinary. It is evident that the insanely immoral superstition in which I had been brought up as responsible for so atrocious an absurdity. Again and again we shall see how the imposition of the antinatural theory and principles of Christianity upon a peculiarly sane, matter-of-fact, reality- facing genius created a …
1929 · PDF PAGE 578
…t, amply justified my faith in his future. A few weeks' work enabled him to fill the gaps in his knowledge of Magick and to unify its elements. He showed an understanding of the subject which was almost enough to satisfy the requirements of the Grade 8° = 3ř. I admitted him as a probationer in the Order on the day of the solstice, and he took the name A V D. I advised him to repress any ambitions to pass quickly to higher Grades and to concentrate on thoroughness. With admirable good sense, he agreed. As evidence of his amazing genius for Magic…
1906 · PDF PAGE 283
TIME 277 Sceft. Quit not the scientific ground we walk on! Myst. 1 regret; but my astonishment an- nulled me. On the main point, however, there is no doubt. These Westerns did, more or less, pursue our methods. Why doubt that they attained our results ? Scept. I never did doubt it. our philosophers have even imagined that ‘self-consciousness,”’ as they style it, is the very purpose of the Universe. Myst. They were so enamoured of the Ananda—the bliss Scept. Presumably. Far be it from me to set myself up against them; but I may more modestly tak…
1929 · PDF PAGE 166
166 The last quarter of a century has swamped all these. The world is seething with the dissatisfaction that springs from insecurity. Men can adapt themselves to pretty well any conditions, but when they do not know from one day to another whether some fundamental principle may not be abolished in the interests of progress, they no longer know where they are. They tend to adopt the principles of the man who flits from one place to another, grabbing portable property and dodging creditors and policemen. Civilization has become a hysterical scram…
1929 · PDF PAGE 407
…hat obscure corner of the world. We found him a courteous host and a most enlightened scholar. One of the advantages of spiritual development is the confirmation of one's results which one obtains from similarly disposed people whom one meets. There is a real freemasonry among such men, which does not depend upon formula and dogma. The instinctive sympathy proves that one has done right to climb beyond conscious conclusions. In the kingdom of spirit is freedom. Our course took us across a chain of mountains. It was a beautiful morning, with but…
1904 · PDF PAGE 101
…oth conceive of a previous and eternally existing God, though the Qabalists hedge by describing this latent Deity as “ Not.” Later com - mentators, notably the illustrious 2 M ac- Gregor-Mathers, have explained this Not as “negatively-existing.” Profound as is my respect for the intellectual and spiritual attainments of him whom I am proud to have been perm itted to call m y m aster,2 I am bound to express my view that when the Qabalists said Not, they meant Not, and nothing else. In fact, I really claim to have re-discovered the long-lost and …
1929 · PDF PAGE 133
…und in Brixton. I say little of Singapore; I say enough when I say that its curries, with their vast partitioned platter of curious condiments to lackey them, speak for themselves. They sting like serpents, stimulate like strychnine; they are subtle and sensual like Chinese courtesans, sublime and sacred, inscrutably inspiring and unintelligibly illumination, like Cambodian carvings. Of Penang I will observe only that its one perfect product is the "Penang Lawyer". But I should like to hear of any other city which can say the same! As to Colomb…
1944 · PDF PAGE 118
…brews, which they brought from the City Babylon, how Nebuchadnezzar the Great King, being afflicted in his Spirit, did depart from among Men for Seven Years’ space, eating Grass as doth an Ox. Now this Ox is the letter Aleph, and is that Atu of Thoth whose number is Zero, and whose Name is Maat, Truth; or Maut, the Vulture, the All‐Mother, being an Image of Our Lady Nuith, but also it is called the Fool, which is Parsifal, “der reine Thor”, and so referreth to him that walketh in the Way of the Tao. Also he is Harpo‐ crates, the Child Horus wal…
1907 · PDF PAGE 136
“The New Wine," and in which the philosophy of “ Crowleyanity ” is expounded at dire length, our admiration for Ca tain Fuller’s judgment is somewhat abated. “ Aleister Crowley," we are told, “ ist e artist Elias ” of whom Paracelsus prophesied: the marvellous being whom God has permitted to make a discovery of the hi hest im rtnnce in his illuminative philosophy of Crowleyanit , in the dazzling and flashing light 0 which t ere is nothing concealed which shall not be discovereJ It has taken 100,000,000 years to produce Aleister Crowley. The worl…
1944 · PDF PAGE 94
…cts were regarded as dead; the difficulty of transmuting metals was that the metals, as they occur in nature, were in the nature of excrements, because they did not grow. The first problem of alchemy was to raise mineral to vegetable life; the adepts thought that the proper way to do this was to imi‐ tate the processes of nature. Distillation, for instance, was not an operation to be performed by heating something in a retort over a flame; it had to take place naturally, even if months were required to consummate the Work. (Months, at that peri…
1929 · PDF PAGE 6
…self obliged by her religion to perform acts of the most senseless atrocity. Her firstborn son, the aforesaid, was remarkable from the moment of his arrival. He bore on his body the three most important distinguishing marks of a Buddha. He was tongue-tied, and on the second day of his incarnation a surgeon cut the fraenum linguae. He had also the characteristic membrane, which necessitated an operation for phimosis some three lustres1 later. Lastly, he had upon the centre of his heart four hairs curling from left to right in the exact form of a…
1944 · PDF PAGE 52
…antithesis.) Once again, the animal kingdom is invoked to fulfil the function of fathering the re‐ deemer. On the banks of the Euphrates men worshipped Oannes, or Dagon, the fish god. The fish as a symbol of fatherhood, of motherhood, of the perpetuation of life generally, constantly recurs. The letter N. (Nun, N, in Hebrew means Fish) is one of the original hieroglyphs stand‐ ing for this idea, apparently because of the mental reactions excited in the mind by the con‐ tinual repetition of this letter. There are thus a number of gods, goddesses…