Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

succession of new lives. 1 Without this union, and without this death of the individual, the cycle would be broken. A chapter will be consecrated to removing the practical diffi- culties of this method of Invocation. It will doubtless hâve been noted by the acumen of the reader that in the great essentials these three methods are one. In each case the magician identifies himself with the Deity invoked. To invoke is to call in, just as to evoke ïs to call forth. This is the essential différence between the two branches of Magick. In invocation, the macrocosm floods the consciousness. In évocation, the magician, having become the macrocosm, créâtes a microcosm. You i/zvoke a God into the Circle. You evokt a Spirit into the Triangle. In the first method identity with the God is attained by J ove and by surrender, by giving up or suppressing ail irrelevant (and illusionary) parts of yourself. It is the weeding of a garden. In the second method identity is attained by paying spécial attention to the desired part of yourself: positive, as the first method is négative. It is the potting-out and watering of a particular flower in the garden, and the exposure of it to the sun. In the third, identity is attained by sympathy. It is very difficult for the ordinary man to lose himself completely in the subject of a play or of a novelj but for those who can do so, this method is unquestionably the best. Observe: each element in this cycle is of equal value. It is wrong to say triumphantly “Mors janua vitæ”, unless you add, with equal triumph, “Vita janua mortis”. To one who understands this chain of the Aeons from the point of view alike of the sorrowing Isis and of the triumphant Osiris, not forgetting their link in the destroyer Apophis, there remains no secret veiled in Nature. He cries that name of God which throughout History has been echoed by one religion to another, the infinité swelling paean I.A.O. ! 2 1. See “The Book of Lies”, Liber 333, for several sermons to this effect. The whole theory of Death must be sought in Liber CXI Aleph. 2. This name. I. A. O. is qabalistically identical with that of The Beast and with His number 666, so that he who invokes the former invokes also the îatter. Also with AIWAZ and the Number 93. See Chapter V. 15