Confessions of Aleister Crowley

539 the ruler to rule depends solely upon the scientific proof if his fitness to do so, and this proof is capable {850} of confirmation by the evidence of the experience that his measures really result in enabling each individual in his jurisdiction to fulfil his own peculiar function as freely as possible. In many respects, no doubt, the Law of Thelema is revolutionary. It insists on the absolute sovereignty of the individual within the limits of his proper function. And this principle will be resented by all those who like to interfere with other people's business. The battle will rage most fiercely around the question of sex. Hardly any one is willing to allow others their freedom on this point. Sometimes it is a personal matter; false vanity makes men try to enslave those whom they desire. They cannot understand "There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: ... ", and they outrage others in every way in order to obtain the outward show of affection. It is the most hideous error conceivable, yet nearly all men make it, and nine tenths of the misery caused by wrong sexual relations is due to this determination to enslave the soul of another. It seems impossible to make men see what to me is obvious; that the only love worth having or indeed worthy of the name is the spontaneous sympathy of a free soul. Social conventions which trammel love are either extensions of this stupid selfishness, or expressions of the almost universal shame which results from false ideas on the subject. Mankind must learn that the sexual instinct is in its true nature ennobling. The shocking evils which we all deplore are principally due to the perversion produced by suppressions. The feeling that it is shameful and the sense of sin cause concealment, which is ignoble, and internal conflict which creates distortion, neurosis, and ends in explosion. We deliberately produce an abscess, and wonder why it is full of pus, why it hurts, why it bursts in stench and corruption. When other physical appetites are treated in this way, we find the same phenomenon. Persuade a man that hunger is wicked, prevent him satisfying it by eating whatever food suits him best, and he soon become a crazy and dangerous brute. Murder, robbery, sedition and many meaner crimes come of the suppression of the bodily need for nourishment. The Book of the Law solves the sexual problem completely. Each individual has an absolute right to satisfy his sexual instinct as is physiologically proper for him. The one injunction is to treat all such acts as sacraments. One should not eat as the brutes, but in order to enable one to do one's will. The same applies to sex. We must use every faculty to further the one object of our existence. The sexual instinct thus freed from its bonds will no more be liable to assume monstrous shapes. Perversion will become as rare as the freaks in a dime museum. I have insisted on this because my experience in the Abbey of Thelema demonstrated the possibility of emancipating humanity from the obsession. At first and in the case of newcomers, the familiar troubles threatened our {851} harmony. But by sticking to the Law, by training ourselves to treat our sexual life as a strictly personal matter, we abolished jealousy, intrigue and all the other evils usually connected with it. We eliminated quarrels, spitefulness, back-biting and the rest. So far so good. But the gods had a surprise in store for me. I had rather expected that by releasing and encouraging the instinct it would loom larger in our lives. The exact contrary was the case. In healthy people this instinct is not particularly predominant. The importance of the subject, its omnipresence, is due to the constant irritation set up by its suppression. We are always thinking of it, like an Anglo-Indian of his liver. In the abbey we removed the sources of irritation, with the result that it slipped back into its proper physiological proportion, into serenity and silence. We almost forgot its existence. It began to surprise us when the sexual symbols which we had exhibited in the abbey, so that familiarity might breed forgetfulness, excited strangers. A man who is either stimulated or shocked by an obscene photograph is just as much of an invalid as one whose mouth waters at the sight of a cookery book.