The Star in the West

THE MOTHER 131 This terrible form of vice , chameleon-like , assumes many colours , one of the principal being that of pleasure under the guise of pain . In such cases utter satiety of the ordinary forms of pleasure gives birth to the desire for the pain which was once dreaded , and the pleasure that the individual once experienced in himself , and also the pleasure he felt was being ex perienced by the participator of his actions , changes , growing little by little from a spark into a flaming volcano of scorching pain , which he alone seeks , find ing new pleasures in the pain he himself endures , and fresh pleasures in the pain he himself inflicts . This is Lust . Peopled with all the horrors of inversion , we pass from the simple realms of prostitution , to the dismal Kingdoms of Sodom and Lesbos . Paederasts and Tribades flock round us , yet we break away from them only to enter the foul jaws of the sexual hell of shrieking flagellants , who rush upon us , as obscene Masochists grovel at our feet ; far into its depths we sink , and there at the altar of Phallommeda sits a foul vulture gloating over a corpse ; and its name is Necrophilia . Into the realms of sexual - neurasthenia Aleister Crowley takes us , and it is necessary that he should . His religion , his philosophy , and his psychology , all point to an ultimate blending of our extreme per fections and imperfections — vice and virtue — in one great monistic unity . He that would be wise must know all things , all things that his transient life can enable him to grasp . In the age which produced Rabelais and Boccaccio , vice was flagrantly open , and the lust which the early Christians had first opposed and secondly absorbed , slowly burnt within the society of their days , till it burst out in the lecherous flames