Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 3)

“akasha”, the “Spirit”, the Aethyr or physics, which is the framework on which ail forms are founded; it receives, records and transmits ail impulses without itself suffering mutation thereby. The “Earth” is the sphere wherein the operation of these “fundamental” and aethvric forces appears to perception. “Under the Earth” is the World of those phenomena which inform those perceived projections, and détermine their particular char- acter. “Dry land” is the place of dead “material things”, dry (i.e. unknowable) because unable to act on our minds. “Water” is the vehicle whereby we feel such things; “air” their menstruum wherein these feelings are mentally apprehended. It is called “whirling” because of the instability of thought, and the fatuity of reason, on which we are yet dépendent for what we call “life”, “Rush- ing Fire” is the world in which wandering thought burns up to swift-darting Will. These four stages explain how the non-Ego is transmuted intc the instrument of knowledge, independent of the personality of its possessor. One must treat it exactly as one treats one’s electroscope or one’s eyes; one influence of one’s wishes. A physician calls in a colleague to attend to his own family, knowing that personal anxiety may dérangé his judgment. A microscopist who trusts his eyes when his pet theory is at stake may falsify the facts, and find too late that he has made a fool of himself. In the case of initiation itself, history is scarred with the wounds inflicted by this Dagger. It reminds us constantly of the danger of relying upon the intellectual faculties. A judge must know the law in every point, and be detached from personal préjudices, and incorruptible, or iniquity will triumph. Dogma, with persécution, delusion, paralysis of progress, and many another evil, as its satraps, has always estabîished a tyranny when Genius has proclaimed it. Islam making a bonfire of written Wisdom, and Haerkel forging biological evidence; physicists ignorant of radioactivity disputing the conclusions of geology, and theologians impatient of truth struggling against the tide of thought; ail such must perish at the hands of their own error in making their minds, internally defective or externally deflected, the measure of the Universe. — 280 —