Magick Without Tears

"GOD" AND "SELF" 203 complex," giving rise later on, in certain cases to whole legions of neuroses. Now then make it a little clearer, please, just what you mean by 'higher'. Skeat seems to connect it with hills, swellings, boils, the maternal breast; is that reason enough for us to connect it with the idea of advantage, or-'superiority' merely translates it into Latin!-worth, or-no, it's really too difficult. Of course, sometimes it has a "bad" meaning, as of temperature in fever; but nearly always it implies a condition preferable to "low. " Applied to the 'self, it becomes a sort of trade name; nobody tells me if he means Khu, or Ba, or Khabs, or Ut of the Upanishads, or Augoeides of the Neo-Platonists, or Adonai of Bulwer-Lytton, or-here we are with all those thrice-accurs't alternatives. There is not, cannot be, any specific meaning unless we start with a sound skeleton of ontogenic theory, a well-mapped hierarchy of the Cosmos, and define the term anew. Then why use it? To do so can only cause confusion, unless the context helps us to clarify the image. And that is surely rather a defeatist attitude, isn't it? When I first set myself to put a name to my "mission" - the contemplation carried me half-way across South-West China-I considered these alternatives. I thought to cut the Gordian Knot, and call it by Abramelin's title the "Holy Guardian Angel" because (I mused) that will be as intelligible to the villagers of Pu Peng as to the most learned Pundits; moreover, the implied theory was so crude that no one need be bound by it. 2. 'Within'. If you don't mind, we'll tackle this now, while 'higher' is fresh in our minds; for it is also a preposition. First you want to go up; then you want to go in. Why? As 'higher' gave the idea of aggression, of conquest, 'within' usually implies safety . Always we get back to that stage of history when the social unit, based on the family, was little less than condition No. I of survival. The house, the