Magick Without Tears

136 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS Brothers."2 To refuse to fulfil any of one's possibilities is the direct negation of the Great Work. There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art; if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein! But exceed! exceed! Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine-and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous-death is the crown of all. Here, in a few simple phrases, is a complete guide-in skeleton-to the Art of Love. Genius without technique is often clumsy and unintelligible; but technique without genius is dry bones. Genius is there, or is not there; nor wit nor work avail if it be absent. Yet one may maintain that it is always there, since "Every man and every woman is a star." In any case only technique responds to study and exercise; it has been written that it "demands as much study as theology, and as much practice as billiards." All one can do is (a) to unleash, (b) to direct, the latent genius. In countries hostile to civilization (horribilesque ultimosque Brittanos) and their colonies, past and present, the technique is almost non-existent; individuals who possess it in any degree of perfection owe their pre-eminence, in almost every case, to tuition and training under the natives of happier and less barbarian parts of the world. Each type of race or culture has its own especial virtues. A. Study: The student should study, bear in mind, and take to heart, such classics as the Ananga-Ranga, the Bagh-i-Muattar of Abdullah el Haji, the Kama Shastra, the Kama Sutra, the Scented Garden of the Sheikh Nefzawi, and certain scientific or pseudo-scientific treatises (usually upon the deformities of nature, or the abuses of ignorance) by 2. See Chapter 12 of this book.