78 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
order to have the exuberant satisfaction of getting rid of it. 
Existence is thus a sacrament. 
Adepts of the White School regard their brethren of the 
Black very much as the aristocratic English Sahib (of the days 
when England was a nation) regarded the benighted Hindu. 
Nietzsche expresses the philosophy of this School to that 
extent with considerable accuracy and vigour. The man who 
denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is 
unequal to it. The brave man rejoices in giving and taking 
hard knocks, and the brave man is joyous. The Scandinavian 
idea of Valhalla may be primitive, but it is manly. A heaven 
of popular concert, like the Christian; of unconscious repose, 
like the Buddhist; or even of sensual enjoyment, like the 
Moslem, excites his nausea and contempt. He understands 
that the only joy worth while is the joy of continual victory, 
and victory itself would become as tame as croquet if it were 
not spiced by equally continual defeat. 
The purest documents of the White School are found in 
the Sacred Books of Thelema. The doctrine is given in 
excellent perfection both in The Book of the Heart Girt with 
a Serpent and in the book of Lapis Lazuli. A single passage is 
adequate to explain the formula. 
7. Moreover I beheld a vision of a river. There was a 
little boat thereon; and in it under purple sails was a 
golden woman, an image of Asi wrought in finest 
gold. Also the river was of blood, and the boat of 
shining steel. Then I loved her; and loosing my 
girdle, cast myself into the stream. 
8. I gathered myself into the little boat, and for many 
days and nights did I love her, burning beautiful 
incense before her. 
9. Yea! I gave her of the flower of my youth. 
10. But she stirred not; only by my kisses I defiled her 
so that she turned to blackness before me.