Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 2)

ihe interférence of internai opposition, and he is a Master of Magick. But for that very reason he is now utterly impotent to achieve anything that is not in absolute accordance with his Original Oath, with his True Will, by virtue whereof he incarnated as a man. With Bill Sykes love and murder are not mutually exclusive, as they are with King Arthur. The higher the type of man, the more sensitive he becomes; so that the noblest love divines intuitively when a careless word or gesture may wound, and, vigilant, shuns them as being of the family of murder. In Magick, likewise, the Adept who is sworn to attain to the Know¬ ledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel may in his grosser days hâve been expert as a Healer, to find that he is now incapable of any such work. He will probably be puzzled, and wonder whether he has lost ail his power. Y et the cause may be no more than that the Wisdom of his Angel deprecates the interférence of ignorant kindlmess with diseases which may hâve been sent to the sufferer for a purpose profoundly important to his welfare. In the case af The Master Therion, he h ad originally the capacity for ail classes of Orgia. In the beginnmg, He cured the sick, bewitched the obstinate, allured the seductive, routed the aggressive, made himself invisible, and generaliy behaved like a Young-Man-About-Town on every possible plane. He would afflict one vampire with a Sending of Cats, and appoint another his private Enchantress, neither aware of any moral oxymoron, nor hampered by the implicit incongruity of his oaths. But as He advanced in Adeptship, this coltishness found its mouth bittedj as soon as He took serious Oaths and was admitted to the Order which we name not, those Oaths prevented him using His powers as playthings. Trifling operations, such as He once could do with a turn of the wrist, became impossible to the most persistent endeavour. It was many years before He understood the cause of this. But little by little He became so absorbed in the Work of His true Will that it no longer occurred to Him to indulge in capricious amusements. Yet even at this hour, though He be verily a Magus of A. \ A.*., though His Word be the Word of the Aeon, though He be the Beast 666, the Lord of the Scarlet Woman “in whom is ail power — 126 —