Magick Without Tears

284 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS mildewed parchments of obsolete laws until they found some long-forgotten piece of mischief that might stop it. The withered husks of womanhood, idle, frustrated, spiteful and malignant, called up their forces, blackmailed the Church into supporting them, and began a senseless string of prosecutions. Notable in infamy stands out the name of Mrs. Ormiston Chant. So here we had the trial of some harmless girl for "accosting"; it was a scene from this that inspired Raven Hill's admirable cartoon. A "pale young curate" is in the witness box . "The prisoner," he drawled, "made improper proposals to me. The actual words used were: 'Why do you look so sad, Bertie?' " The magistrate : "A very natural question!" Now, fifty years later, here am I in the dock. ("How can you expect people to take your Magick seriously!" I hear from every quarter , "when you write so gleefully about it, with your tongue always in your cheek?") The curate's twang, the solemnity of self-importance, all manners that do not disclose the real man, are abominations, "Anathema Maranatha" -or any other day of the week. These painted masks are devised to conceal chicanery or emptiness. The easy-going humorous style of Vivekananda is intelligible and instructive; the platitudinous hot potatoes of Waite are neither. The dreadful thing is that this assumption of learning, of holiness, of mysterious avenging powers, somehow deceives the average student. He does not realise how well and wisely such have conned Wilde's maxim: "To be intelligible is to be found out." I know that I too am at times obscure; I lament the fact. The reason is twofold: (a) my ineradicable belief that my reader knows all about the subject better than I do myself, and (at best) may like to hear it tackled from a novel angle, (b) I am carried away by the exultant exaltation of my theme; I boil over with rapture - not the crystal-clear, the cool solution that I aimed at. On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more