Magick Without Tears

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.