The Law is for All

16 The Law is for All any omission might falsify or weaken the whole, however little aware the editor might be of the effect of his editing. In this vol­ ume I have allowed certain passages from The Book of the Law to stand by themselves without any comment; for it has some­ times seemed better to leave the reader to make what interpreta­ tion he can of his own than to risk confusing and delaying his apprehension of the message of the Book as a whole. The Book of the Law has already been published without a Commentary;1 but, if it is to reach and influence a wider public, a Commentary, which must often be detailed, is indispensable. The values of the Book, its application to our lives, to the questions of our time, must be explained. I believe that those values are great; and that the more widely the principles of The Book of the Law are adopted, the better chance there will be for our escape from a renewal, on a more disastrous scale, of the calamities of the past quarter of a century. If those principles come to be generally adopted, I believe that mankind will issue triumphantly from the evils of its past. A veritable “New Order” will be set up, bringing with it a general realization of what the “Good Life” means, and operating with a veritably “revolutionizing” effect beyond the most sanguine dreams of any one of those very heterogeneous groups of modern revolutionaries and reformers. This may not happen soon; the sceptic will say that, if it ever happens, it will be in the far future. 1 [Wilkinson refers to Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX (London: O.T.O., 1938; 2nd rev. ed. Pasadena: Church of Thelema [1942]).] Possibly; but a beginning can, and indeed must, be made now. The more closely we look at the present state of the world, (few of us, today, can help looking at it, however little we may enjoy doing so) the more necessary it will surely appear that a beginning should be made. Consider present discontents, present depriva­ tions, physical, moral and spiritual; consider present urgent and vital needs. These are too palpable and too widely recognized to need specification. Well, then, is it foolishly sanguine to anticipate that a new way of thought, a new religion and a new morality, will be rapidly succeeded by rapid growth? This growth may be as