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Page 217 of 2251929 · PDF PAGE 129
129 vile suggestion. Even had the tale been true, which Fidelis disdainfully denied, the woman must have been as witless as she was worthless to splash her own daughter with such ditch-water. All the same, I feel grateful. Her stupid lie put it into my head to make the experiment in question, though of course with the knowledge and approval of the girl. The result is recorded in a subsequent chapter. {225} When I began to develop this power consciously, I obtained considerable success. At the time of this journey I had arranged to visit a siste…
1929 · PDF PAGE 475
…ieve; and he believed, like a Catholic who is afraid to sleep in the dark. Having thus established myself as an Irish rebel and a pro-German, I went away and considered what I could do about it. I read The Fatherland; I found the German case presented with learning, with logic and with moderation. The motifs were scholarship, statistics and statesmanlike sobriety. It seemed to me that, in the peculiar temper of the United States, whose people, however ignorant and dishonest individually, are always, as a whole, curiously anxious to know the tru…
1929 · PDF PAGE 278
…ed the flash was Cimmerian. My eyes are naturally very slow to accommodate themselves to change of illumination --- I have never met any man equally helpless in case of sudden diminution of light. I had no thought soever as to whether my shot might have hit anybody. There was not the faintest sound; but the alley seemed somehow empty. I do not know whether I stepped over fallen bodies or not. (I was facing the archway when I fired.) I thought: I will get out of this alley at once. Those people may be lying in ambush in the archway, especially a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 127
…e, I realized instantly their spiritual superiority to the Anglo-Saxon, and my own deep-seated affinity to their point of view. The Chinaman is not obsessed by the delusion that the profits and pleasures of life are really valuable. He gets all the more out of them because he knows their worthlessness, and is consequently immune from the disappointment which inevitably embitters those who seek to lay up treasure on earth. A man must really be a very dull brute if, attaining all his ambitions, he finds satisfaction. The Eastern from Lao Tzu and …
1929 · PDF PAGE 511
…th of my "son", as above mentioned. I did not understand the matter in that light but in this: that by means of my system of training, a man had crossed the Abyss and become a Master of the Temple in much shorter period than had ever been known. My own case had been extraordinary. Eleven years had sufficed me to accomplish a task which in human experience had never required much less than triple the time. Moreover, the conditions had been almost {806} uniquely favourable for me. I possessed all the qualities, all the resources requisite. In the…
1907 · PDF PAGE 132
…odern readers, weary of the sordid and tawdry tediousness of gutter realism and Utopia idealism, will find in this book a satisfaction of many a heartache. The SEEKBR says: Years ago, the saintly Novalis called Baruch de Spinoza “ that God-intoxicated Man.” What would he have said had he lived to-day, and looked upon the face of Aleister Crowley, that glory revealed to us by the genius of Captain 1. F. C. Fuller? Crowley has been reproached in some thoughtless or malicious quarters for his ignorance or tolerance of evil. But is this not because …
1929 · PDF PAGE 145
…e. The effect is of impromptu excitement. Poor, serious, single-minded Allan, with his whole soul set on alleviating the sufferings of humanity and helping them to reach a higher plane of existence, was saddened and disillusioned. One incident was somewhat scandalously amusing. He was doing his {250} best to enter into the spirit of the thing and called my attention to the "strains of wild oriental music". I knew better. I had read Herrick's poem abut the young lady who left a glove in the royal presence, and remembered that Lady Clara de Vere …
1906 · PDF PAGE 149
…ley himself recognised this later : hence the direct and simple vigour of the ‘‘ Masque of Anarchy.” It has often puzzled atheists how a man of Milton’s genius could have written as he did of Christianity. But we must not forget that Milton lived immediately after the most important Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern times: Shelley on the brink of such another Political upheaval. Shake- speare alone sat enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost in the mire of contro- versy.* This also, though ‘ I’m no Shakes- peare, as too p…
1929 · PDF PAGE 243
…ne thing about Wells that I mustn't mind: he spoke English with an accent. 59 rue de Grenelle, Paris 14 Feby 1911 Dear Aleister Crowley, Many thanks. I am very glad to have the volume. I will mention it in The New Age, but I no longer write for T. P's. Weekly. Not a portrait of you --- my dear Crowley --- in the English Review! for all you sat for was the waistcoat, the title and the poetry. All these portraits are composite. Yours sincerely, ARNOLD BENNETT Alas! I lack the literary skill to construct composite portraits. My own poor effort is …
1929 · PDF PAGE 87
… like a dumb-bell, the ends being much too big to go through the hole. Eckenstein said that he was almost ready to swear that he saw the man take them up separately and rapidly put them together, {160} in which condition he had them and was never able to take them apart. He explored the surface minutely for signs of complexity of structure but without success. I never saw the toy, he having sent it to Mr. W. W. Rouse Ball, a great authority on such matters, but also baffled in this case. We were naturally always interested in any problems conce…
1929 · PDF PAGE 101
…nborn sympathetic understanding. I did not fully realize the colossal stature of that sacred spirit; but I was instantly aware that this man could teach me more in a month than anyone else in five years. He was living in great discomfort and penury. I offered him the hospitality of my flat. I have always felt that since the occult sciences nourish so many charlatans, it should be one's prime point of honour not to make money in any way connected with them1. The amateur status above all! Hospitality is, however, always allowable. But I was caref…
1929 · PDF PAGE 219
…hat the sheriff was a mere flourish and that all we had to do was to consent to being married, and declare that we regarded ourselves as man and wife. A faint disgust at the prose of the proceedings induced me to elaborate them by taking out {366} my dirk and kissing it, as a pledge of my faith. I never thought of kissing her! It then transpired that the sheriff had to have his little whack, after all, no less than an Armenian pimp. The marriage had to be registered in his office. We were completely at a loose end. I was to go back to Boleskine…
1929 · PDF PAGE 541
541 Of course (in practice) many people, perhaps the majority, will not accept {853} the Law of Thelema. We found that life in the abbey with its absolute freedom was too severe a strain on those who were accustomed to depend on others. The responsibility of being truly themselves was too much for them; but sooner or later, without any action on our part, without any quarrel or ostensible reason, they found themselves ejected into their "previous condition of servitude". The Book of the Law anticipates this: "... the slaves shall serve. ..." Th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 135
…because He would one day open His eye and destroy D.D.C.F. I.A. closed the argument by assuming the position Padmasana and repeating the Mantra: "Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva." D.D.C.F., angrier than ever, sought the sideboard, but soon returned, only to find Frater I.A. still muttering: "Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva." "Will you stop blaspheming?" cried D.D.C.F.; but the holy man only said: "Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva." "If you don't stop I will shoot you!" said D.D.C.F., drawing a revolver fr…
1904 · PDF PAGE 102
AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 95 and hungry, he is extended in all these, besides, of course, many more. But let us suppose that these five are all. Call the man X; his formula is then X t+s+b+h+h. If he now eat; he will cease to be extended in hunger; if he be cut off from time and gravitation as well, he will now be represented by the formula Xs+b. Should he cease to occupy s pace and to exist, his formula would then be X 0. This expression is equal to 1; whatever X may represent, if it be raised to the power of 0 (this meaning mathematically “if it b…
1929 · PDF PAGE 5
…lf to ensure the theoretical impossibility of editing a life like mine on any consistent principle. I find myself obliged, for these and many other reasons, to abandon altogether any idea of conceiving an artistic structure for the work or formulating an artistic purpose. All that I can do is to describe everything that I remember, as best I can, as if it were, in itself, the centre of interest. I must trust nature so to order matters that, in the multiplicity of the material, the proper proportion will somehow appear automatically, just as in …
1929 · PDF PAGE 96
…as if blasted by the lightning flash" and thence concluded that Magick was all rubbish. I offer this example to logic to the Museum of Human Imbecility, in the principal city of the Astral Plane. I understood perfectly well that Back and Kelly, having no capacity for Magick, were bound to fail either to evoke a spirit or to get themselves blasted. If one does not understand anything about electricity, one cannot construct a dynamo; and having so failed, one cannot get oneself electrocuted. But I suppose that their failure and my success was mos…
1929 · PDF PAGE 123
…torn from its historical justification, it persisted placidly. The soul of England was stagnant, stupefied! Nothing remained for which a man might be willing either to live or to die. Huxley, Manning, Booth, Blavatsky, Ray Lankester --- it mattered nothing what they said and did, all were equally stifled in shapeless sacks, stowed away indistinguishably, their voices mingled in the murmur of polite society. It is hard to say why Queen Victoria should have seemed the symbol of this extraordinary state of suspended animation. Yet there was someth…
1929 · PDF PAGE 72
… such first-rate importance as those of 1902 and 1905 to the Himalayas. Subsequent exploration has been hampered in consequence; and the manslaughter of seven porters on Everest in 1922 was directly due to ignorance of the lesson taught by the Kangchenjunga disaster, as will be made clear in the proper place. However, my principles have triumphed all along the line. There were no {136} Swiss guides on Everest in 1922 and the record for altitude is held by amateurs travelling two on a rope. Let me emphasize the fact that I am absolutely satisfie…
1906 · PDF PAGE 274
268 TIME man, with all his virtues, was, like the Eng- lishman, a savage.” And indeed we are too apt to think of you only as red-faced, drunken, beef-eating boors and ruffans, with no soul and less sense, as if you were all soldiers; or as prim, con- ceited, supercilious, opinionated prigs, as if you were all civilians; or as unspeakable stupidity incarnate in greedy oiliness, as if you were all missionaries. Your highest placed women make virtuous our courtezans by a comparison of costume and manners; if our advices be true, the morality test …