Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

practice of Dharana is perhaps more generally useful. As one prevents the more accessible thoughts from arising, we strike deeper strata — memories of childhood reawaken. Still deeper lies a class of thoughts whose origin puzzles us. Sojne of these apparently belong to former incarnations. By cultivating these departments of one’s mind we can develop them; we become expert ; we form an organized cohérence of these originally disconnected éléments ; the faculty grows with astonishing rapidity, once the knack of the business is mastered. It is much easier (for obvious reasons) to acquire the Magical Memory when one has been sworn for many lives to reincarnate immediately. The great obstacle is the phenomenon called Freudian forgetfulness; that is to say, that, though an unpleasant event may be recorded faithfully enough by the mechanism of the brain, we fail to recall it, or recall it wrong, because it is painful. “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” analyses and illustrâtes this phenomenon in detail. Now, the King of Terrors being Death, it is hard indeed to look it in the face. Mankind has created a host of phantastic masks; people talk of “going to heaven”, “passing over”, and so on; banners flaunted from paste- board towers of baseless théories. One instinctively flinches from remembering one’s last, as one does from imagining one’s next, death. 1 The point of view of the initiate helps one immensely. As soon as one has passed this Pons Asinorum, the practice becomes much easier. It is much less trouble to reach the life before the last; familiarity with death breeds contempt for it. It is a very great assistance to the beginner if he happens to hâve some intellectual grounds for identifying himself with some definite person in the immédiate past. A brief account of Aleister Crowley’s good fortune in this matter should be instructive. It will be seen that the points of contact vary greatly in character. i. The date of Eliphas Levi’s death was about six months previous to that of Aleister Crowley s birth. The reincarnating ego is supposed to take possession of the foetus at about this stage of development. i. This latter is a very valuable practice to perforai. See Liber HHH; also read up the Buddhist méditations on the Ten Impurities. — 51 —