Chapter III á- Verses 57—58
183
But the “fool” is still as described in the Tarot Trump. He is 
an epicene creature, soft and sottish, with an imbecile laugh and a 
pretty taste in fancy waistcoats. He lacks virility, like the ox which 
is the meaning of the letter aleph which describes the Trump, 
and his value is Zero, its number. He is air, formless and incapa­
ble of resistance, carrier of sounds which mean nothing to it, 
swept up into destructive rages of senseless violence from its 
idleness, incalculably moved by every pressure or pull. One-fifth is 
the fuel of fire, the corruption of rust; the rest is inert, the soul of 
explosives, with a trace of that stifling and suffocating gas which 
is yet food for vegetable, as it is poison to animal, life.
We have here a picture of the average man, of a fool. He has 
no will of his own, is all things to all men, is void, a repeater of 
words of whose sense he knows nought, a drifter, both idle and 
violent, compact partly of fierce passions that burn up both him­
self and the other, but mostly of inert and characterless nonentity, 
with a little heaviness, dullness, and stupefaction for his only 
positive qualities.
Such are the “fools” whom we despise. The man of Thelema is 
vertebrate, organized, purposeful, steady, self-controlled, virile; 
he uses the air as the food of his blood; so also, were he deprived 
of fools he could not live. We need our atmosphere, after all; it is 
only when the fools become violent madmen that we need our 
cloak of silence to wrap us, and our staff to stay us as we ascend 
our mountain-ridge; and it is only if we go down into the dark­
ness of mines to dig us treasure of earth that we need fear to 
choke on their poisonous breath.
58. But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty; ye are 
brothers!
Commentary: “the keen”: these are the men whose Will is as 
a sword sharp and straight, tempered and ground and polished its 
flawless steel; with a Wrist and an Eye behind it.
“the proud”: these are the men who know themselves to be 
stars, and bend the knee to none. True pride prevents a man from 
doing aught unworthy of himself.