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the ruler to rule depends solely upon the scientific proof if his fitness to do so, and this proof is 
capable 
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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 
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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.