The Law is for All

138 The Law is for All This then being understood, that we cannot call any given pas­ sion good or bad absolutely, any more than we can call Knight to King’s Fifth a good or bad move in chess without study of the position, we may see more clearly what this verse implies. There is here a general instruction to refine Pleasure, not by excluding its gross elements, but by emphasizing all elements in equilibrated development. Thus one is to combine the joys of Messalina with those of Saint Teresa and Isolde in one single act. One’s rapture is to include those of Blake, Petrarch, Shelley, and Catullus. Liber Aleph has detailed instruction on numerous points involved in these questions. Why “eight and ninety rules of art”? I am totally unable to suggest a reason satisfactory to myself; but 90 is tzaddi, “The Emperor,” and 8, cheth, “The Charioteer” or Cup-Bearer; the phrase might then conceivably mean “with majesty.” Alterna­ tively, 98 = 2 x 49; now Two is the number of the Will, and Seven of the passive senses. 98 might then mean the full expansion of the senses (7 x 7) balanced against each other, and controlled firmly by the Will. “exceed by delicacy”: this does not mean, by refraining from so-called animalism. One should make every act a sacrament, full of divinest ecstasy and nourishment. There is no act which true delicacy cannot consecrate. It is one thing to be like a sow, uncon­ scious of the mire, and unable to discriminate between sweet food and sour; another to take the filth firmly and force oneself to discover the purity therein, initiating even the body to overcome its natural repulsion and partake with the soul at this Eucharist. We “believe in the Miracle of the Mass” not only because meat and drink are actually “transmuted in us daily into spiritual sub­ stance,” but because we can make the “Body and Blood of God” from any materials soever by Virtue of our Royal and Pontifical Art of Magick.1 1 [The quotations are from “Liber XV,” the O.T.O. Gnostic Mass. See Works Cited.]