Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

( Illustration: A man ma y think it his duty to act in a certain way, through having made a fancy picture of himself, instead of investigating his actual nature. For example, a woman may make hei self misérable for life by thinking that she prefers love to social considération, or vice versa. One woman may stay with an unsympathetic nusband when she would really be happy in an attic with a lover, while another may fool herself into a romande elopement when her only true pleasures are those of presiding at fashionable functions. Again, a boy’s instinct may tell him to go to sea, while his parents insist on his becoming a doctor. In such a case, he will be both unsuccessful and unhappy in medicine.) (8) À Mail v'Iiose conscious will is at odds with îiis True Will is wasting his strengtli. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently. (Illustration: When Civil War rages in a nation, it is in no condition to undertake the invasion of other countries. A man with cancei employs his nourishment alike to his own use and to that of the enemy which is part of himself. He soon fails to resist the pressure of his environment. In practical life, a man who is doing what his conscience tells him to be wrong will do it verv clumsily. Atfirst!) (9) A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of fhe Universe to assist him. (Illustration, fhe first principle of success in évolution is that the individual should be true to his own nature, and at the same time adapt himself to his environment.) (10) Nature is a continuous phenomenon, through we do not know in ail cases how things are connected. (Illustration: Human consciousness dépends on the properties of pi otoplasm, the existence of which dépends on innumerable physical conditions peculiar to this planetj and this planet is determined by the mechanical balance of the whole universe of matter. We may then say that our consciousness is causally connected with the remotest galaxies 3 yet we do not know even how it arises from — or with — the molecular changes in the brain.) (H) Science enahles us to take advantage of the contin- uity of Nature by the empirical application of certain XIX