Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 2)

He was at first unable to pierce their veils. In fact, as the Book shows, it was only by virtue o£ successive and most exalted initia¬ tions undergone in the Aethyrs themselves that He was able to penetrate beyond the I5th. The Guardians of such fortresses know how to guard. The Master Therion has published the most important prac- tical magical secrets in the plainest language. No one, by virtue °£ being clever or learned, has understood one word; and those unworthy who hâve profaned the sacrament hâve but eaten and drunken damnation to themselves. One may bring down stolen fire in a hollow tube from Heaven, as The Master Therion indeed has done in a way that no other adept dared to do before him. But the thief, the Titan, must foreknow and consent to his doom to be chained upon a lonely rock, the vulture devouring his liver, for a season, until Hercules, the strong man armed by virtue of that very fire, shall corne and release him. The Teitan 1 — whose number is the number of a man, six hundred and three score and six — unsubdued, consoled by Asia and Panthea, must send forth constant showers of blessing not onlv upon Man whose incarnation he is, but upon the tyrant and the persecutor. His infinité pain must thrill his heart with joy, since every pang is but the écho of some new flame that leaps upon the earth lit by his crime. For the Gods are the enemies of Man; it is Nature that Man must overcome ere he enter into his kingdom. 2 The true God 1. TEITAN — 300+5+ 10+300+1+50 = 666. 2. In another sense, a higher sense, Nature is absolutely right through- out* The position is that the Magician discovers himself imprisoned in a distorted Nature of Iniquity; and his task is to disentangle it. This is ail to be studied in the Book of Wisdom or Folly (Liber ALEPH, CXI) and in The Master Therion’s édition of the Tao T eh King. A rough note from His Magical Diary is appended here : “Ail éléments must at one time hâve been separate, — that would be the case with great heat. Now when atoms get to the sun, when we get to the sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and ail the éléments are themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of ail his adventures in combination. By the way, that atom — 152 —