The Star in the West

216 THE STAR IN THE WEST To attain to the ne plus ultra of Crowleyanity , it will be necessary to arrive at a state of desperate de spair , a state in which the equilibrium of both body and mind are balancing between conscious alienation and unconscious insanity ; and this state is the Cer berus we all have to pass before we can regain the blissful arms of our long - lost Eurydice . To clearly illuminate the Orphic progress through the Plutonic regions of Philosophy , it will be necessary , first of all to satisfy the three heads of the terrible offspring of Echidna's womb , whose names are Berkeley , Hume , and Kant . BERKELEY . Berkeley , that “ God - illumined Adept ,” ) almost at the commencement of his introduction to “ The Prin ciples of Human Knowledge ,” states : “ Upon the whole ,I am inclined to think that the far greater part , if not all , of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers , and blocked up the way to know ledge , are entirely owing to ourselves that we have first raised a dust , and then complained we cannot see ." 2 And naturally to expect , Berkeley himself , though an Adept of a very high order , starting up wards through the clear atmosphere of the sky , clutched the very fire from the altar of God , and then in his descent to the dusty plains of Earth , caused such a whirlwind to arise , that his immediate successors , and even we who live two hundred years after that 1 Eleusis , vol . iii, p . 225 . 2 P. 6.