Magick Without Tears

156 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS At the best it is very far from being practical instruction. (The chapter on the Lamen, pp. 159-161, is even worse.) An analogy, not too silly, for these three: the Chess-player, the Opening, and the Game itself. But-you will object-why be silly at all? Why not say simply that the Lamen, stating as it does the Character and Powers of the wearer, is a dynamic portrait of the individual, while the Pantacle, his Universe, is a static portrait of him? and that, you pursue flatteringly, is why you preferred to call the Weapon of Earth (in the Tarot) the Disk, emphasizing its continual whirling movement rather than the Pantacle or Coin, as is more usual. Once again, exquisite child of our Father the Archer of Light and of seaborn Aphrodite, your well-known acumen has "nicked the ninety and nine and one over" as Browning says when he (he too!) alludes to the Tarot. As you will have gathered from the above, a Talisman is a much more restricted idea; it is no more than one of the objects in his Pantacle, one of the arrows in the quiver of his Lamen. As, then, you would expect, it is very little trouble to design. All that you need is to "make considerations" about your proposed operation, decide which planet, sign, element or sub-element or what not you need to accomplish your miracle. As you know, a very great many desirable objects can be attained by the use of the talismans in The Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon the King; also in Pietro Oi Abano and the dubious Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa. You must on no account attempt to use the squares given in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage until you have succeeded in the Operation. More, unless you mean to perform it, and are prepared to go to any length to do so, you are a fool to have the book in your possession at all. Those squares are liable to get loose and do things on their own initiative; and you won't like it. The late Philip Haseltine, a young composer of genius, used one of these squares to get his wife to return to him. He