Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 3)

career on earth is his kingdom, that even the Master Therion is no more than a fellow man in another valley, and that he must explore and exploit his own inheritance with his own eyes and hands. The Magician must not accept the Master Therion’s account of the Astral Plane, His Qabalistic discoveries, His instructions in Magick. They may be correct in the main for most men; yet they cannot be wholly true for any save Him, even as no two artists can make identical pictures of the same subject. More, even in fundamentals, though these things be Truth for ail Mankind, as we carelessly say, any one particular Magician may be the one man for whom they are false. May not the flag that seems red to ten thousand seem green to some one other? Then, every man and every woman being a Star, that which is green to him is verily green 3 if he consent to the crowd and call it red, hath he not broken the Staff of Truth that he leaneth upon? Each and every man therefore that will be a Magician must explore the Universe for himself. This is pre-eminently the case in the matter of the Astral Plane, because the symbols are so sensitive. Nothing is easier than to suggest visions, or to fashion phantasms to suit one’s ideas. It is obviously impossible to commimicaîe with an indépendant intelligence — the one real object of astral research — if one allows one’s imagination to surround one with courtiers of one’s own création. If one expects one’s visions to resemble those of the Master Therion, they are only too likely to do so; and if one’s respect for Him induces one to accept such visions as authentic, one is being false to one’s soûl; the visions themselves will avenge it. The true Guide being gone, the seer will stray into a wilderness of terror where he is tricked and tortured; he will invoke his idol the Master Therion, and fashion in His image a frightful phantasm who will mock him in his misery, until his mind stagger and fall; and, Madness swooping upon his carrion, blast his eyes with the horror of seeing his Master dissolve into that appalling hallucination, the “Vision of The Démon Crowley!” Remember, then, always, but especially when dealing with the Astral Plane, that man’s breath stirs the Feather of Truth. What — 252