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Page 81 of 841929 · PDF PAGE 11
… summer. Alick remembers Monmouth, or rather Monmouth Castle. It is curious that, in the act of remembering this for the purpose of this book, he was obsessed by the idea that there could not be such a place as Monmouth; the name seemed fantastic. It was confused in his mind with "Monster" and "Mammoth", and it was some hours before he could convince himself of its reality. He remembers staying in a farm some distance from the road and has a very vague impression of becoming acquainted with such animals as ducks and pigs. Much more clearly aris…
1929 · PDF PAGE 155
…show Thornton a beautiful view of a hillside and river, which I had come across on my way home. We set out, he being armed with a sketch book and a kukri, which he would always carry about with him, though I could never understand the reason; if I had been anticipating the day's events, I should not have troubled to inquire. At the edge of the hill weariness overtook me; I sat down, pointing to him a tiny path down the hill slope which he was to pursue. He was rather a long time returning, and I was just about to follow in search when I heard h…
1906 · PDF PAGE 286
28a TIME sense of the Bible, thus degrading a sublime text-book of mystic lore into the merest nursery, or too often bawdy-house, twaddle and filth. You wili alter all this, my friends! Let Science keep the books: Scepl, For a cross between a plodding ass and an old stocking, she will do well! And what dividends do you promise? AJyst. In the first year. Dhyana; in the second, Samadhi; and inthe third, Nirvana. Scept, It is not the first year yet. Is this coin current? Afyst. Ah! I remember now your phrase ‘Dhyana a debaucn.’’ You are of course …
1929 · PDF PAGE 325
… of the situation is to extend the connection of the word "love" to include all phenomena of the uniting of opposites, as is done in The Book of the Law. Hardly anything is more important for the aspirant than to get rid of the tendency to make God in his Own image. One should learn to regard the formula of Yod, Hé, Vau as universal, not as generalized from the reproductive process of mammals, but vice versa. That process should be regarded as one particular case of the Law, and that case by no means an important one. We must be constantly on o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 322
…pains to upset the apple cart: abandon the idea, and they immediately hand it back with a charming compliment. This is the lesson of the Book of Job. I quote the entry in full, concealing only the name of the Order. At Kobe. A.'. fair only; though I invoked all these powers of mine. Yet after, by a strong effort of will, I banished my sore throat and my surroundings, and went up in my Body of Light. Reached a room in which a cruciform table was spread, a naked man being nailed thereto. Many venerable men sat around, feasting on his living flesh…
1929 · PDF PAGE 216
…notated the text, prefixed a "Preliminary Invocation", added a prefatory note, a Magical Square (intended to prevent improper use of the book) and ultimately an Invocation of Typhon when the First Magical War of the Aeon of Horus was declared. This essay throws a very clear light upon my position. I could not deny the facts of Ceremonial Magick. It is impossible to explain why a dog squeals when you hit him with a stick; but we do not therefore deny that this happens, or at least that there is some impression of some such kind somewhere. I was …
1929 · PDF PAGE 443
…osed by the reabsorption of all individuality into infinity. It ends in absolute annihilation which, as has been shown elsewhere in this book, may in reality be regarded either as an exact equivalent for all other terms soever, or (by postulating the category of time) as forming the starting point for new adventure of the same kind. It will be clear from the above that the philosophical perfection of this system of initiation leaves nothing to be desired. We may write Q.E.D. The practical problem remains. We have already decided to incarnate, a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 283
…to strengthen the main theme. Later in the month, at Mandalay, I wrote approximately half of "Sir Palmede the Saracen". The idea of this book was to five an account of the Mystic Path in a series of episodes, and each episode was to constitute a definite arrangement of colour and form. Thus, Section I shows the blue and yellow of sea and sand, a knight in silver armour riding along their junction to a point where an albatross circles round a mutilated corpse.
1929 · PDF PAGE 86
…e the opening scene in some gigantic drama. Numerous episodes in these memoirs illustrate this thesis. One might even say that the whole book is a demonstration of how the accumulation and consequence of large numbers of apparently disconnected facts have culminated in bringing "the time and the place, and the loved one all together". Eckenstein's parents had escaped from Germany in '48, or thereabouts, as political exiles, or so I imagine; I do not remember any details. But he was educated at Bonn and knew Bloody Bill intimately. This luckless…
1929 · PDF PAGE 313
…s, thousands after thousands, each a terrific thunderbolt blasting its way through my brain during these frightful months. Of course The Book of the Law makes mincemeat of all such dragons, but I am convinced that the gods
1929 · PDF PAGE 339
… I want to be taught. I want to enlarge my mind. Nihil humani a me alienum puto. Even so, humani is one word too many. As I wrote in The Book of Lies. The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has five notes. The more necessary anything appears to my mind the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation. It is natural that my attitude should be utterly abhorrent to my fellow countrymen. But they are quite wrong to think that my ideas are anti-Anglo-Saxon. They are anti-anything which imagines itself to have a monopoly of truth or p…
1904 · PDF PAGE 103
… my equation, fantastic as it may seem, has a perfect and absolute parallel in logic. Thus: let us convert twice the pro- position “some books are on the table.” By negativing both terms we get “Absence- of-book is not on the table,” which is precisely my equation backwards, and a thinkable thing. To reverse the process, what do I mean when I say “some pigs, but not the black pig, are not in the sty” ? I im ply that the black pig is in the sty. All I have done is to represent the con- version as a change, rather than as m erely another way of e…
1929 · PDF PAGE 505
505 and no one would hear of publishing a book. Occasionally, a man promised great things; but the arrangements always fell through suddenly and unreasonably. I had a host of friends in the city, yet days and weeks would pass without my seeing a soul except in the most casual way. I was even unable to practise my personal Magick. An inscrutable paralysis had me by the spine. After many days I said to myself that I must break up these conditions forcibly; I would a-wooing go whether my mother would let me or no. I set my teeth and began my ritua…
1929 · PDF PAGE 473
…nse of rhythm and a great critical ability, which is masked by his opportunism. His Confessions of a Barbarian is probably the cleverest book ever written by an American about Europe. Some of his poems are so simple and direct that, if they miss sublimity, which may or may not be the case, the blame is to be laid to the disastrous Jewish trait of conscious cleverness which came so near to shipwreck the greatness of Heine. He recalled himself to my recollection by saying that he had met me in the office of Mr Austin Harrison, the editor of the E…
1929 · PDF PAGE 88
…hed description of a phenomenon. For instance, in the novel "She" here is a "rocking stone" about which there are sufficient data in the book to enable an expert to say whether it was possible in nature. He decided that it was, but only on the assumption that it was a cone balanced on its apex. I suppose that every form of navigation possesses its peculiar dangers. I remember Eckenstein telling me of an adventure he once had with Legros. One might be tempted to think that very little harm could come to a barge in a dock on the Thames, bar being…
1929 · PDF PAGE 328
…. I was now thoroughly prepared to take up my Work of initiating mankind, but I was still determined to do it on the old lines. I had no books of reference at Bournemouth, and it struck me that it would be very convenient if I possessed a volume giving all the correspondences of the Cabbala in a compact form. I spent a week in writing this down from memory and the result is Liber 777. (It is to be noticed that there is no reference to the Cairo working anywhere in this book.) In the month of December the Secret Chiefs formally invited me, thoro…
1929 · PDF PAGE 405
…ted the necessity of adhering to certain proportions. It chanced that I had in my pocket a proof of one of the illustrations of my {646} Book Four, Part II. I pulled it out and put it under his nose. In all essentials it was identical with Epstein's idea of the Sun-God. The astounding thing is not this mere similarity, but the fact that Epstein had called it by that name; for the man of Vitruvius is really the Sun-God. It is the symbol which unifies the centre of our system with the true nature of man. The genius of Epstein had expressed throug…
1929 · PDF PAGE 575
…'t understand what you mean by that last observation." This was absurd. It was some perfectly simple straightforward comment on his last book. I began to suspect him of pulling my leg in some supersubtle system invented since my return to Europe. "Are you
1929 · PDF PAGE 163
…ders were that the rest of us could do as we liked; but Eckenstein would not be allowed to enter Kashmir. We asked why. At this time The Book of the Law not having yet been given to mankind, he was unable to reply, "Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!"2; but we understood him as uttering "words to that effect" in his strong silent way. We finally induced him to face Eckenstein; who, with his usual aplomb, put the poor man into a dilemma at once. He wanted to know whether he was or was not arrested. "Heaven forbid," said the D.C., "that a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 530
…ringing me a supply of canned provisions. I began at once to work on a new translation, {836} with Commentary, of the Tao Teh King. This book, one of the oldest in existence, is surely one of the wisest. But all previous translations, however scholarly, had completely failed to convey the meaning of Lao Tzu. An uninitiated translator is bound to meet constantly with apparently nonsensical passages. One must know what the author is likely to mean by any given phrase, and this can only be done my a man who has intimate experience of the spiritual…