Magick Without Tears

74 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS sufficiently simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon. When the light of intelligence begins to dawn dimly through many fogs upon these savages, we reach a second stage. Bold spirits muster courage to assert that the evil which is so obvious, is, in some mysterious way, an illusion. They thus throw back the whole complexity of sorrow to a single cause; that is, the arising of the illusion aforesaid. The problem then assumes a final fonn: How is that illusion to be destroyed. A fairly pure example of the first stage of this type of thought is to be found in the Vedas; of the second stage, in the Upanishads. But the answer to the question, "How is the illusion of evil to be destroyed?" depends on another point of theory. We may postulate a Parabrahm infinitely good, etc., etc., etc., in which case we consider the destruction of the illusion of evil as the reuniting of the consciousness with Parabrahm. The unfortunate part of this scheme of things is that on seeking to define Parabrahm for the purpose of returning to Its purity, it is discovered sooner or later, that It possesses no qualities at all! In other words, as the fanner said, on being shown the elephant: There ain't no sich animile. It was Gautama Buddha who perceived the inutility of dragging in this imaginary pachyderm. Since our Para brahm, he said to the Hindu philosophers, is actually nothing, why not stick to our original perception that everything is sorrow, and admit that the only way to escape from sorrow is to arrive at nothingness? We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools. Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus. Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive stage of the White tradition, for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains