451
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which many Russians competent to judge have assured me struck surer to the soul of Russia than 
anything of Dostoyevsky. Their witness fills me with more satisfaction as to the worth of my work 
than anything else has ever done. 
Another poem, "Morphia", has no ostensible reference to Russia, but the insight into the psychology 
of the "addict" was indubitably conferred by my illumination. I had no experience, even at second 
hand, of the effects of the drug; yet I was assured by a distinguished man of letters who had himself 
suffered from its malice, that I have expressed to the utmost the terrific truth. He could hardly 
believe at first that I had written it without actual knowledge. 
During this period the full interpretation of the central mystery of freemasonry became clear in 
consciousness, and I expressed it in dramatic form in "the Ship". The lyrical climax is in some 
respects my supreme achievement in invocation; in fact, the chorus beginning: 
Thou who art I beyond all I am ... 
seemed to me worthy to be introduced as the anthem into the Ritual of the Gnostic Catholic Church 
which, later in the year, I prepared for the use of the O.T.O., the central ceremony of its public and 
private celebration, corresponding to the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. 
While dealing with this subject I may as well outline its scope completely. Human nature demands 
(in the case of most people) the satisfaction of the religious instinct, and, to very many, this may 
best be done by ceremonial means. I wished therefore to construct a ritual through which people 
might enter into ecstasy as they have always done under the influence of appropriate ritual. In 
recent years, there has been an increasing failure to attain this object, because the established 
cults shock their intellectual convictions and outrage their common sense. Thus their minds criticize 
their enthusiasm; they are unable to consummate the union of their individual souls with the 
universal soul as a bridegroom would be to consummate his marriage if his love were constantly 
reminded that its assumptions were intellectually absurd. 
I resolved that my ritual should celebrate the sublimity of the operation of universal forces without 
introducing disputable metaphysical theories. I would neither make nor imply any statement about 
nature which would not be endorsed by the most materialistic man of science. On the surface this 
may sound difficult; but in practice I found it perfectly simple to combine the most rigidly rational 
conceptions of phenomena with the most exalted and enthusiastic celebration of their sublimity. 
(This ritual has been published in The International, New York, March 1918, and in The Equinox, 
vol. III, No. 1.) 
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Numerous other poems, essays and short stories were written during this summer. In particular 
there is a sort of novel, The Lost Continent, purporting to give an account of the civilization of 
Atlantis. I sometimes feel that this lacks artistic unity. At times it is a fantastic rhapsody describing 
my ideals of Utopian society; but some passages are a satire on the conditions of our existing 
civilization, while others convey hints of certain profound magical secrets, or anticipations of 
discoveries in science. 
From my brief description of the conditions of travel in Russia, the intelligent should be able to 
deduce what I thought of the immediate political future of the country. I returned to England with 
the settled conviction that in the event of a serious war (the scrap with Japan was really an affair 
of outposts, like our own Boer War) the ataxic giant would collapse within a few months. England's 
traditional fear of Slav aggression seemed to me ridiculous; and France's faith in her ally, pathetic. 
The event has more than justified my vision. I have no detailed knowledge of politics;, but, just as 
my essay, "The Heart of Holy Russia", told the inmost truth without even superficial knowledge of 
the facts which were its symptoms, so I possess an immediate intuition of the of the state of a