The Law is for All

60 The Law is for All The doctrine of Thelema resolves the whole question in con­ formity with the facts observed by science and the proprieties pre­ scribed by Magick. It must be obvious to the most embryonic tyro in alchemy that if there be any material substance soever endowed with Magical properties, one must class, primus inter pares, that vehicle of essential humanity which is the first matter of that Great Work wherein our race shares the divine prerogative of creating man in its own image, male and female. It is evidently of minor importance whether the will to create be consciously formulated. Lot in his drunkenness served the turn of his two daughters, no less than Jupiter, who prolonged the night to forty-eight hours in order to give himself time to beget Hercules. Man is in actual possession of this supreme talisman. It is his “pearl of great price,”1 in comparison with which all other jewels are but gew-gaws. It is his prime duty to preserve the integrity of this substance. He must not allow its quality to be impaired either by malnutrition or by disease. He must not destroy it like Origen and Klingsor. He must not waste it like Onan. 1 [Matthew 13:36.] But physiology informs us that we are bound to waste it, no matter what be our continence, so long as we are liable to sleep; and Nature, whether by precaution or by prodigality, provides us with so great an excess of the substance that the reproduction of the human race need not slacken, though the proportion of men to women were no more than three to the thousand. The problem of efficiency consequently appears practically insoluble. We are now struck with the fact that Nuit commands us to exercise the utmost freedom in our choice of the method of utiliz­ ing the services of this our first, our finest and our fieriest talis­ man; the license appears at first sight unconditioned in the most express and explicit terms that it is possible to employ. The caveat, “But always unto me”, sounds like an afterthought. We are almost shocked when, in the following verse, we discover a menace, none the less dread because of the obscurity of its terms.