Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 2)

a rule) by a fascination. These Works are too easy 3 and rarely useful. They hâve a nasty trick of recoiling on the magician. 6. Works of destruction, which may be done in many different ways. One may fascinate and bend to one’s will a person who has of his own right the power to destroy. One may employ spirits or talismans. The more powerful magicians of the last few centuries hâve employed books. In private matters these Works are very easy, if they be neces- sary. An adept known to The Master Therion once found it necessary to slay a Circe who was bewitching brethren. He merely walked to the door of her room, and drew an Astral T (“tradi- tore”, and the symbol of Saturn) with an astral dagger. Within 48 h ours she shot herself. 1 7. Works of création and dissolution, and the higher invoca¬ tions. There are also hundreds of other operations 3 2 to bring wanted objects — gold, books, women and the like; to open locked doors, to discover treasure; to swim under water3 to hâve armed nen at command — etc., etc. Ail these are really matters of detail 3 the Adeptus Major will easily understand how to perform them if necessary. 3 1. As explained above, in another connexion, he who' “destroys” any being must accept it, with ail the responsibilities attached, as part of himself. The Adept here in question was therefore obliged to incorporate the elemental spirit of the girl — she was not human, the sheath of a Star, but an advanced planetary daemon, whose rash ambition had captured a body beyond its capacity -to conduct — in his own magical vehicîe. He thereby pledged himself to subordinate ail the sudden accession of qualities — pas- sionate, capricious, impulsive, irrational, selfish, short-sightedness, sensual, fickle, crazy, and desperate, to his True Will; to discipline, co-ordinate, and employ them in the Great Work, under the penalty of being torn asunder by the wild horses which he had bound fast to his own body by the act of “destroying” their independent consciousness and control of their chosen vehicle. See His Magical Record An XX, Q in bb and onward. 2. Examples of Rituals for several such purposes are given in the Equinox. 3. Moral : become an Adeptus Major ! — 196 —