Magick Without Tears

126 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS fIrmly closed; and Silence is the meaning of the MU root of Mystery. However, we must admit the value of rhythmical, one-pointed sound; that is very different from Noise. Old French has noise, nose, a debate, quarrel, noise; Provencal noisa, nausa, nueiza. But Diez claims the derivation from nausea-and by the Living Jingo, I consider Diez a hundred percent white man! I once had a most wholesome lesson: how diffuse and therefore unnecessary is much of even our most would-be-compressed speech. I had been charged by my Superior with the reconstruction of a certain ritual. This was in 1912; already the tempo of the world had speeded up mercilessly; to get people to learn even short passages by heart would be no easy job. So, warned by the prolix, pious, priggish and platitudinous horrors of Freemasonry (especially the advanced degrees of the Scottish and Egyptian Rites), I resolved to cut the cackle and come to the 'osses in the most drastic manner of which I was capable. It was a great success. But then we had a candidate who was stone deaf. (Not "a little hard of hearing"; his tympana were burst.) Obviously, one could show him slips of paper, as one did in talking to him. But then in much of the ceremony the candidate must be hoodwinked! Nothing for it but to communicate by the deaf and dumb alphabet on his fIngers. This I did-and found that I could cut out on the spur of the moment at least forty percent of the "irreducible minimum" without doing any damage at all to the effect of the ritual. ''That lamed 'im!" What I am out to complain of is what I seriously believe to be an organized conspiracy of the Black Lodges to prevent people from thinking. Naked and unashamed! In some countries there has already been compulsory listening-in to Government programmes; and who knows how long it will be before we