413
Like wolves at the killing, 
Moaning and shrilling 
And clear as the throb in the throat 
...........of a thrush. 
During the journey I wrote "The Pilgrim", "Return" and "On the Edge of the Desert", lyrics inspired by 
the idea of getting back to my inamorata in London. 
In Paris I wrote "The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon". The hero, Edgar Rolles, meets a girl at the Taverne 
Panthéon (where I wrote the story) and takes her to a fight between a white man and a Negro, the 
latter suggested by Joe Jeannette, whom I had just seen and much admired for his physical beauty. 
He takes her to his studio and recognizes her as a member of the order. He proposes to put her 
through the ordeal of crossing the Abyss. She fails and they part. Ida meets the Negro, who loves 
her. Rolles and Ninon (Nina Olivier already mentioned) lunch with them. Ida takes pleasure in 
torturing the Negro and begs him to "respect her modesty" --- which she has not got. The Negro 
suddenly understands that she is heartless and sinks his teeth in her throat. Rolles kills him with a 
kick. He then consults one of the Secret Chiefs, who advises him to take Ida away. He tells Rolles 
that she has passed through the Abyss after all. The formula is that perfect love is perfect 
understanding. He marries her and a year later she dies in childbirth, saying that she has given 
herself three times, once to the brute, once to the man and now to God. Her previous failure had 
been to surrender herself. She wanted to get everything and give nothing. 
This story marks a stage in my own understanding of the formula of initiation. I began to see that 
one might become a Master of the Temple without necessarily knowing any technical Magick or 
mysticism at all. It is merely a matter of convenience to be able to represent any expression as x + 
Y = 0. The equation may be solved without words. Many people may go through the ordeals and 
attain the degrees of the A.'. A.'. without ever hearing that such an Order exists. The universe is, in 
fact, busy with nothing else, for the relation of the Order to it is that of the man of science to his 
subject. He writes CaCl2 + H2SO4 = CaSO4 + 2HCl for his own convenience and that of others, but 
the operation was always in progress independently. 
{657} 
Arrived in England, my Pegasus 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 violin solos. 
The current of creative ecstasy stopped as suddenly as it had begun and I went on from Eastbourne 
to London. I found everything in confusion. I did not realize that the esprit de corps which is the 
essence of such books as The Three Musketeers was as dead as duelling. The men who had clustered 
round me enthusiastically when I seemed successful had dispersed like the disciples when they 
found that the Pharisee meant business. They all knew perfectly well that the attacks on me were 
malicious nonsense, that Jones's fiasco was a mere accident due to over-confidence; but they were 
all, with very few exceptions, cowards to the bone. They were as afraid of nothing as so many 
babies in the dark, expecting to see the bogey man come down the chimney. 
I suppose the proper thing would have been to have "rallied my desperate followers", but the fact is 
that I am congenitally incapable of beating the big drum. Most leaders induce their followers to 
fight in haste and leave them to repent at leisure. I always feel that this sort of thing is somehow 
unfair and in the long run useless. I am content to wait until people back me up wholeheartedly 
without the press gang or the revival meeting. I carried on imperturbably, exactly as if nothing