The Law is for All

Chapter II A Verses 33-35 123 business. Thus coordination of our impressions should help us to control them; but to allow reason to rule us is as abject as to expect the exactitude of our ledgers to enable us to dispense with initiative on the one hand and actual transactions on the other. 34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake! Commentary: We are not to calculate, to argue, to criticize; these things lead to division of will and to stagnation. They are shackles of our Going. They hamstring our Pegasus. We are to rise up—to Go—to Love—we are to be awake, alert — Joyous and eager Our tresses adorning, O let us beleaguer The City of Morning!1 1 Crowley, The World’s Tragedy (1910), p. 31, paraphrase; the original poem has “O let us away to / The city of morning!”! The Secret of Magick is to “enflame oneself in praying.” This is the ready test of a Star, that it whirls flaming through the sky. You cannot mistake it for an Old Maid objecting to Everything. This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity. Observe that we must “rise up” before we “awake!” Aspira­ tion to the Higher is a dream—a wish-fulfilment which remains a phantasm to wheedle us away from seeking reality—unless we follow it up by action. Only then do we become fully aware of ourselves, and enter into right reaction with the world in which we live. 35. Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty! Commentary: A ritual is not a melancholy formality; it is a Sacrament, a Dance, a Commemoration of the Universe. The Uni­ verse is endless rapture, wild and unconfined, a mad passion of speed. Astronomers tell us this of the Great Republic of the Stars; physicists say the same of the Little Republic of Molecules. Shall not the Middle Republic of Men be like unto them? The polite ethicist demurs; his ideal is funereal solemnity. His horizon is