PREFACE 
XXVll 
of the Ancient Wisdom, and publish it in as permanent a 
form as possible. This I did in The Equinox. I should 
perhaps have been strictly classical, and admitted only 
the "Publication in Class A," "A-B," ''E,'' and "D" 
material. But I had the idea that it would be a good plan 
to add all sorts of other stuff, so that people who were 
not in any way interested in the real Work might 
preserve their copies . ... "They" [the Secret Chiefs of 
the Order / . . . were agreed on measures calculated to 
assure the survival of the Wisdom worth saving until the 
time, perhaps three hundred or six hundred years later, 
when a new current should revive the shattered thought 
of mankind. The Equinox, in a word, was to be a sort of 
Rosetta Stone. 
It appears that he recognized that he should have 
published only the basic yoga and magical instructions 
known as the Official Instructions of the Order in order to 
preserve "the Sacred Tradition." Now that the original sets of 
The Equinox are out of circulation-there 
were only one 
thousand sets printed-it 
seems necessary to reissue the 
fundamental 
material 
that he had in mind at the 
beginning-the official instructions. Thus Gems from The 
Equinox consists solely of those. If it was the wish of the 
so-called Secret Chiefs of the Order to preserve the practical 
Wisdom of the hidden Sanctuaries against the disasters of 
war, natural cataclysms and famine- all of which now seem 
clearly in the offing-I hope that the issuance of Gems from 
The Equinox will assist in the fulfillment of the original 
intent, freed from the addition "of all sorts of other stuff." 
For, 
thus freed, this set of reprints of the Official 
Publications of the A :. A:. now coincides with what appears 
to have been Crowley's original intent as expressed in Magick 
without Tears. 
Magick without Tears demanded that some careful pruning 
be done. I have exercised great caution and deliberation in 
the editing, if only because I am fully aware of the fanatical 
attitude of some Crowley disciples. Every word that he wrote