The Law is for All

Chapter II a Verse 22 111 great story of this in Zanoni.1 Glyndon, an uninitiate, takes an Elixir, and beholds not Adonai the glorious, but the Dweller on the Threshold; cast out from the Sanctuary, he becomes a vulgar drunkard. 1 [Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first Lord Lytton, Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale. See Works Cited.] 2 Varieties of Religious Experience [(1902), lecture 8; see Works Cited. See also Crowley, Book 4, Part III, ch. 5 (rev. ed., p. 161).] “this folly against self”; altruism is a direct assertion of dual­ ity, which is division, restriction, sin, in its vilest form. I love my neighbour because love makes him part of me; not because hate divides him from me. Our law is so simple that it constantly approximates to truism. “The exposure of innocence”. Exposure means “putting out,” as in a shop-window. The pretense of altruism and so-called vir­ tue “is a lie”; it is the hypocrisy of the Puritan, which is hideously corrupting both to the hypocrite and to his victim. To “lust” is to grasp continually at fresh aspects of Nuit. It is the mistake of the vulgar to expect to find satisfaction in the objects of sense. Disillusion is inevitable; when it comes, it leads only too often to an error which is in reality more fatal than the former, the denial of “materiality” and of “animalism.” There is a correspondence between these two attitudes and those of the “once-born” and “twice-born” of William James.1 2 Thelemites are “thrice-born”; we accept everything for what it is, without “lust of result,” without insisting upon things conforming with a priori ideals, or regretting their failure to do so. We can therefore “enjoy all things of sense and rapture” according to their true nature. For example, the average man dreads tuberculosis. The “Christian Scientist” flees this fear by pretending that the disease is an illu­ sion in “mortal mind.” But the Thelemite accepts it for what it is, and finds interest in it for its own sake. For him it is a necessary part of the Universe; he makes “no difference” between it and any other thing. The artist’s position is analogous. Rubens, for instance, takes a gross pleasure in female flesh, rendering it 1:44 1:26