The Law is for All

62 The Law is for All One cannot say that any significance of that gesture is forbid­ den, for “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.” But this may and shall be said, that a significance which indicates igno­ rance or forgetfulness of the central truth of the Universe, is an acquiescence in that opacity caused by the confusion of the veils which conceal the soul from the consciousness, and thus create the illusion which the aspirant calls Sorrow, and the uninitiate, Evil. The sexual act, even to the grossest of mankind, is the agent which dissipates the fog of self for one ecstatic moment. It is the instinctive feeling that the physical spasm is symbolic of that mir­ acle of the Mass, by which the material wafer, composed of the passive elements, earth and water, is transmuted into the sub­ stance of the Body of God, that makes the wise man dread lest so sublime a sacrament suffer profanation. It is this that has caused him, in half-instinctive, half-intellectual half-comprehension of the nature of the truth, which has driven him to fence the act about with tabus. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. His fear has created phantoms, and his malobservation suggested precautions scarce worthy to be called empirical. We see him combat analogous difficulties in a precisely similar manner. History shows us the physician defending mankind against plague with exorcisms on the one hand and useless herbs on the other. A charred stake is driven through the heart of a vampire, and his victim is protected with garlic. The strength of God, who can doubt? The strength of taste and of smell are known facts. So they measured strength against strength without considering whether the one was appropriate to the other, any more than as if one were to ward off the strength of steel swords by the strength of the colour of one’s armour. Modern science, by correct classifica­ tion, has expounded the doctrine of the magical link. We no longer confuse the planes. We manipulate physical phenomena by physical means; mental by mental. We trace things to their true causes, and no longer seek to cut the Gordian knot of our igno­ rance by the sword of a postulated Pantheon. Physiology leaves us in no doubt as to the power of our inher­ ited talisman. And modern discoveries in psychology have made it