Book 4 (Part II)

6o Just as if you tell a child not to do a thing —no matter what —it will immediately want to do it, though otherwise the idea might never have entered its head, so it is with the saint. "We have all of us these tendencies latent in us; of most of them we might remain uncon- scious all our lives —unless they were awakened by our Magick. They he in ambush. And every one must be av^akened, and every one must be destroyed. Every one who signs the oath of a Proba- tioner is stirring up a hornets' nest. A man has only to affirm his conscious aspiration ; and the enemy is upon him. It seems hardly possible that any one can ever pass through that terrible year of probation —and yet the aspirant is not bound to anything difficult; it almost seems as if he were not bound to anything at all — and yet experience teaches us that the effect is like plucking a man from his fireside into mid-Atlantic in a gale. The truth is, it may be, that the very simplicity of the task makes it difficult. The Probationer must cling to his aspiration—affirm it again and again in desperation. He has, perhaps, almost lost sight of it ; it has become meaningless to him; he repeats it mechanically as he is tossed from w^ave to wave. But if he can stick to it he will come through. And, once he is through, things will again assum.e their proper aspect;