Magick Without Tears

172 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS approach to Sanctuaries which of necessity are closely guarded, but merely to the recognition of a new-comer to that part of the world in general. Of course all these miracles are very naughty of you; they mean that your magical power has sprung a few small leaks; at least, the water is oozing between some planks not sealed as Hermetically as they should be. But oh-and this is naughtier still-it is a blessed, blessed comfort that they happen, that chance, coincidence, and all the rest will simply not explain it all away, that your new vision of life is not a dream, but part and parcel of Experience for evermore, as real as any other manifestation of Reality through sense such as is common to all men. And this brings us-it has been a long way round-from the suggestion of your visit to the question (hitherto unanswered) in your letter. You raise so vast and razor-edged a question when you write of the supposed antinomy of "soul" and "sense" that it seemed better to withhold comment until this later letter; much meditation was most needful to compress the answer within reasonable limits; even to give it form at all is no easy matter. For this is probably the symptom of the earliest stirring of the mind of the cave-man to reflection, thereunto moved by other symptoms-those of the morning after following upon the night before . It is- have we not already dealt with that matter after a fashion?-evidence of disease when an organ becomes aware of its own modes of motion. Certainly the mere fact of questioning Life bears witness to some interruption of its flow, just as a ripple on an .even stream tells of a rock submerged. The fiercer the torrent and the bigger the obstacle, the greater the disturbance to the surface-have I not seen them on the Bralduh eight feet high? Lethargic folk with no wild impulse of Will may get through Life in bovine apathy ; we may well note that (in a sense) the rage of the water seems to our perturbed imagining actually to increase and multiply the obstructions; there is a critical point beyond which the ripples fight each other!