Confessions of Aleister Crowley

325 symbols. The practice naturally follows the lines laid down by the theory. For this reason one's early adventures are accompanied by romantic phenomena and stigmata. Buddhist psychology recognizes this. For instance, the first Jhana is accompanied by Ananda, bliss; but in the second this quality disappears. I think it deplorable that mystic advancement should be expressed by means of such hieroglyphs as "the Bride's Reception"; that is, at least, if any peculiar attribution of a sexual character is implied. Of course, even above the Abyss, Chokmah and Binah, Chiah and Neschamah are customarily called Father and Mother; considering how lamentably prone humanity is to anthropomorphism, it seems unfortunate. But we cannot deny the justice of the symbolism, and the way to eliminate the disadvantages and dangers 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 our guard against egocentric implications; they do not even exalt the ego as they pretend to do, they limit it. We become great just so far as we are able to liberate ourselves from the constriction of our normal conception that we are man. When one has crossed the Abyss, especially, one should be altogether free from the prepossession that one's body and mind are more than inconvenient instruments through which we perceive the universe. To increase our understanding of the cosmos, we must constantly endeavour to counteract the limitations which the fact that our instrument is a human being seeks to impose upon us. I do not, however, wish to represent the Operation of Abra-Melin which I was now performing as a retrogression; but I had to undertake it in order to fulfil completely the formulae of adeptship. It was necessary to complete the work of he Second Order before I could adequately take up my work in the Third. Again, the mission, in order to carry out which I had incarnated, was a mission to mankind; and this must explain why, pari passu with my personal {529} progress, I walked continually in the way of the world. My spiritual life itself was now therefore definitely duplex, and this fact must be kept in mind if my subsequent actions are to be properly understood. Arriving in England on the second of June, I was stunned by the news of my bereavement. I made a point of detaching my mind. In the train from Liverpool to London I continued to chat with my companions on the boat as if nothing had happened. Having got to bed I released the prisoner. There was only one thing to be done: "I solemnly reaffirmed the oath of my obligation to perform the Operation, offering under these terrible circumstances all that yet remained." I am convinced, by the way, that the unremitting blows of misfortune, of which this bereavement was the first, were caused by the malice of the Abra-Melin demons, but that none of them would have reached me if I had understood and obeyed the Secret Chiefs and the forces behind them in the Shanghai working. It was really curious the way one form of slight illness after another attacked me. My wife happened to make some remark to this effect to the housekeeper, a real old Sussex product. She nodded her head wisely. "He'll never be better," she said in an oracular tone, "until that baby is born." I found on inquiry that it is a widespread superstition in Sussex that sometimes especially when the husband is unusually devoted to his wife, she escapes the usual inconvenience of pregnancy, while he is constantly ill. The idea is of sympathetic transference. I became seriously ill. Through everything, surgery and all, I continued the daily work. On July 26th I went to stay with Cecil Jones, who was now an Exempt Adept. (The initials of his motto are