503
violence of passion and prejudice. The hatred of the Yankee and his fear of the Negro are as great 
as ever. In the latter case it has increased. The recent revival and the nation-wide spread of the Ku-
Klux-Klan is one of the most sinister symptoms of recent years. 
From Atlanta I went to Detroit and then took in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky. I need not 
describe them. I content myself with the remark that they make a third wonder of the world worth 
seeing, from Niagara to the Grand Canyon. Except for the Yellowstone Park, which I have not yet 
seen, nothing else in America is worth seeing first or last for the matter of that. 
A final inspection of the bughouse in Detroit left me free to get back to Europe. I reached London a 
few days before Christmas 1919. 
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81 
In The Vision and the Voice, the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple was symbolized by 
the adept pouring every drop of his blood, that is his whole individual life, into the Cup of the 
Scarlet Woman, who represents Universal Impersonal Life. There remains therefore (to pursue the 
imagery) of the adept "nothing but a little pile of dust". In a subsequent vision the Grade of Magus is 
foreshadowed; and the figure is that this dust is burnt into "a white ash", which ash is preserved in 
an Urn. It is difficult to convey the appropriateness of this symbolism, but the general idea is that 
the earthly or receptive part of the Master is destroyed. That which remains has passed through 
fire; and is therefore, in a sense, of the nature of fire. The Urn is engraved with a word or symbol 
expressive of the nature of the being whose ash is therein. The Magus is thus, of course, not a 
person in any ordinary sense; he represents a certain nature or idea. To put it otherwise, we may 
say, the Magus is a word. He is the Logos of the Aeon which he brings to pass1. 
The above is obscure. I perceived and deplore the fact. The idea may be more intelligible, 
examined in the light of history. Gautama Buddha was a Magus. His word was Anatta; that is, the 
whole of his system, which revolutionized the thought of Asia, may be considered as based upon and 
consecrated in that one word, which is his denial of the existence of the Atman or "soul" of Hindu 
philosophy. 
Later, Mohammed also partially overturned an age by uttering his word, Allah. But to us, 
practically, the most important case of the kind is that connected with such "gods" as Dionysus, 
Osiris, Baldur, Marsyas, Adonis, Jesus, and other deifications of the unknown Magus concerned. The 
old pagan worship of the Mother-idea was superseded by the word IAO or its equivalents, which 
asserted the formula of the Dying God, and made the Male, dying to himself in the act of love, the 
engineer of the continued life of the race. This revolution cut at the root of all previous custom. 
Matriarchy vanished; self-sacrifice became the cardinal virtue, and so through infinite ramifications. 
This idea of accomplishing the Great Work by a voluntary death was bound up with the belief that 
the sun died, and was reborn with the hours and the seasons. Astronomy having exploded this 
fiction, mankind was ready to gain a further comprehension of its own parallel case. 
My own word, Thelema, supplies a new and scientifically sound basis for 
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1. Cf. Rabelais: the final secret is in the bottle inscribed TRINC.  
ethics. Self-sacrifice is a romantic folly; death does not end life; it is a temporary phase of life as 
night and winter are of terrestrial activity. Many other conceptions are implied in this word, 
Thelema. In particular, each individual is conceived as the centre of his own universe, his essential 
nature determining his relations with similar beings and his proper course of action. It is obvious 
that these ideas are revolutionary. Yet to oppose them is to blaspheme science. Already, in a