Magick Without Tears

THREE SCHOOLS OF MAGICK (1) 69 no need to take our ideas at second-hand. The Yellow School of Magick possesses one perfect classic, The Tao Teh King. 4 It is impossible to find any religion which adequately represents the thought of this masterpiece. Not only is religion as such repugnant to science and philosophy, but from the very nature of the tenets of the Yellow School, its adherents are not going to put themselves to any inconvenience for the enlightenment of a lot of people whom they consider to be hopeless fools. At the same time, the theory of religion, as such, being a tissue of falsehood, the only real strength of any religion is derived from its pilferings of Magical doctrine; and, religious persons being by definition entirely unscrupulous, it follows that any given religion is likely to contain scraps of Magical doctrine, filched more or less haphazard from one school or the other as occasion serves. Let the reader, therefore, beware most seriously of trying to get a grasp of this subject by means of siren analogies. Taoism has as little to do with The Tao Teh King as the Catholic Church with the Gospel. The Tao Teh King inculcates conscious inaction, or rather unconscious inaction, with the object of minimizing the disorder of the world. A few quotations from the text should make the essence of the doctrine clear. X: 3: Here is the Mystery 0/ Virtue. It createth all and nourisheth all; yet it doth not adhere to them; it operateth all, but knoweth not o/it, nor proc/aimeth it; it directeth all, but without conscious control. 4. Unfortunately there is no translation at present published which is the work of an Initiate . All existing translations have been garbled by people who simply failed to understand the text. An approximately perfect rendering is indeed available, but so far it exists only in manuscript . One object of this letter is to create sufficient public interest to make this work, and others of equal value, available to the public.