Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 2)

ail magic power is dangerous. There are even more debased and evil forms, things in themselves black. Such is the use of spiritual force to material ends. Christian Scientists, Mental Healers, Professional Diviners, Psychics and the like, are ail ipso facto Black M agi ci ans. Thev exchange gold for dross. They sell their higher powers for gross and temporary benefit. That the most crass ignorance of Magick is their principal characteristic is no excuse, even if Nature accepted excuses, which she does not. If you drink poison in mistake for wine, your “mistake” will not save your life. Below these in one sense, yet far above them in another, are the Brothers of the Left Hand Path L These are they who “shut themselves up”, who refuse their blood to the Cup, who hâve trampled Love in the Race for self-aggrandisement. As far as the grade of Exempt Adept, they are en the same path as the White Brotherhood; for until that grade is attained, the goal is not disclosed. Then only are the goats, the lonely leaping mountain-masters, separated from the gregarious huddling vallev-bound sheep. Then those who hâve well learned the lessons of the Path are ready to be torn asunder, to givc up their own life to the Babe of the Abyss which is — and is not — they. The others, proud in their purple, refuse. They make themselves a false crown of the Horror of the Abyss ; they set the Dispersion of Choronzon upon their brows; they clothe themselves in the poisoned robes of Form; they shut themselves up; and when the force that made them what they are is exhausted, their strong towers fail, they become the Eaters of Dung in the Day of Be- with-us, and their shreds, strewn in the Abyss, are lost. Not so the Masters of the Temple, that sit as piles of dust in the City of the Pyramids, awaiting the Great Flame that shall consume that dust to ashes. For the blood that they hâve surren- dered is treasured in the Cup of our Lady Babalon, a mighty I. See Liber 418, and study it well, in this matter. Equinox I, V. Sup¬ plément. — 192