Magick Without Tears

IMPROVISING A TEMPLE 175 Wha t is really more significant is the hidden, the unexpressed, soul of the Book; the way in which it leaps into wild spate of rhapsody on any excuse or no excuse. This is surely more convincing than some dreary thesis, plodding along doggedly with the "proof" (!) that "God is good," every sentence creaking with your chalk-stones and squeaking with the twinges of your toe! Yet just because I proclaim a doctrine of joy in the language of joy, people - dull camels-say I am not "serious." Yet I have found pleasure in harnessing the winged horses of the Sun to the ploughshare of Reason, in showing the validity of this doctrine in detail. It satisfies my sense of rhythm and of symmetry to explain that every experience, no matter what, must of necessity be a gain of grandeur, of grip, of comprehension and enjoyment ever growing as complexity and simplicity succeed each other in sublime systole and diastole, in strophe and antistrophe chanting against each other to the stars of the Night and of the Morning! Of course it is easy as pie to knock all this to pieces by "lunatic logic," saying: "Then toothache is really as pleasant as strawberry shortcake." You are hereby referred to Eight Lectures on Yoga. None of the terms I am using have been, or can be defined. All my propositions amount to no more than tautology: A is A. You may even quote The Book of the Law itself: "Now a curse on Because and his kin! ... Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!" (AL, 11:28-33) These things stink of Ignoratio Elenchi, or something painfully like it: a sort of slipping up a cog, of "confusing the planes ," of wilfully misunderstanding the gist of an argument. (All magicians, by the way, ought to be grounded solidly in Formal Logic.) Never forget, at the least, how simple it is to make a maniac's hell-broth of any proposition, however plain to common sense. All the above, now: - Buddhism refuted. Yet it is a