Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

almost entirely unrelated to his éxperience, and it would certainly not give him sight. A similar phenomenon is observed when a gentleman who has taken an “honours degree” in modem languages at Cambridge arrives in Paris, and is unable to order his dinner. To exclaim against the Master Therion is to act like a person who, observing this, should attack both the professors of French and the inhabitants of Paris, and perhaps go on to deny the existence of France. Let us say, once again, that the magical language is nothîng but a convenient System of classification to enable the magician to docket his expériences as he obtains them. Yet this is true also, that, once the language is mastered, one can divine the unknown by study of the known, just as one’s knowledge of Latin and Greek enables one to understand some unfamiliar English word derived from those sources. Also, there is the similar case of the Periodic Law in Chemistry, which enables Science to prophesy, and so in the end to discover, the existence of certain previously unsuspected éléments in nature. Ail discussions upon philosophy are necessarily stérile, since truth is beyond language. Tliey are, liowever, useful if carried far enough — if carried to the point when it becomes apparent that ail arguments are arguments in a circle. * But discussions of the details of purely imaginary : qualifies are frivolous and may be deadly. For the great danger of this magical theory is that the student may mistake the alphabet for the things which the words represent. An excellent man of great intelligence, a iearned Qabalist, once amazed the Master Therion by stating that the Tree of Life was the framework of the Universe. It was as if some one had seriously maintained that a ait was a créature constructed by placing the letters C. A. T. in that order. It is no wonder that Magick has excited the ridicule of the unintelligent, since even its i. See “The Soldier and the HunchbackT Equinox I, i. The apparatus of human reason is simply one particular System of coordinating impressions; its structure is determined by the course of the évolution of the species. It is no more absolute than the évolution of the species. It is no more absolute than the mechanism of our muscles is a complété type wherewith ali other Systems of transmitting Force must conform. - 6 -