The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX He realized that there were in this world she-mules as well as she-asses, and that though the former would never foal in spite of all the stallions of Moultan, the latter seldom failed to do so after having been for a few minutes in the presence of a Margate jackass. Discarding Chastity (Brahmacharya)—a good purgative for the prurient—he wrote in its place the word “ Health.” Do not worry about this code and that law, about the jibber of this crank or the jabber of that faddist. To hell with ethical pigs and prigs alike. Do what you like; but in the name of your own Higher Self wilfully do xo injury to your own body or mind by over indulgence or under indulgence. Discover your normal appetite; satisfy it. Do not become a glutton, and do not become a nut-cracking skindlewig. Soon after his arrival in Ceylon, and at the time that he was working with Frater I. A. the greatness of the Buddha, as we have already seen, attracted him, and he turned his attention to the dogmatic literature of Buddhism only to find that behind its unsworded Cromwellian colossus,* with all his rigid virtues, his stern reasoning, his uncharitableness, judicialism and impartiality, slunk a pack of pig-headed dolts, stubborn, asinine and mulish; slavish, menial and to the top of the hill before Hebron, and saying: “My good boy, if you ever intend becoming strong, the first thing you must do is to buy a pair of my four pound dumb-bells and my sixpenny book on physical culture.” * The Buddha (it is true) did not encourage bloodshed, in spite of his having died from an overfeed of pork, but as Mr. A. Crowley has said, many of his present-day followers are quite capable of killing their own brothers for five rupees. The Western theory that Buddhists are lambs and models of virtue is due to the fact that certain Western vices are not so congenial to the Asiatic as they are to the European; and not because Buddhists are incapable of enjoying themselves. 192