Magick Without Tears

THELEMIC MORALITY 311 the Instinct should override the decision of the Reason. Obviously, one must assume that both are equally "right"; that one's interpretation of one's Instinct is full and accurate, that one's solution of "how shall I act for the best?" is uniquely correct. First of all, one is tempted to argue that, that being so, there can be no disagreement; that is, on our general Theory of the Universe. True enough! The farther one goes in initiation, the rarer will such incidents become. Even a quite uninitiated person-always provided that Thelema has freed him morally-should find that nine times in ten, the inhibiting antagonism is accidental, or at least apparently irrelevant. (Notice, please, that our conditions of the 'rightness' of both sides are rigid: the usual inhibition is a threat to vanity, or some instinct equally false, and to be weeded out.) Suppose that by what is hardly fraud, but "undue influence" (as the lawyers say) I could persuade a dying person to leave me a couple of hundred thousand in his will. I shall use every penny of it for the Great Work; it sounds easy! "Of course! Damn your integrity! Damn you! The Work is all that matters." All the same, I say NO. I should never be the same man again. I should have lost that confidence in myself which is the spine of my work. No need that the fraud should be discovered openly: it would appear in all my subsequent work, a subtle contamination. But suppose that it were not the matter of gulling a moribund half-wit; suppose that the price was a straightforward honest-to-God Bank Robbery under arms on the highway, should I hesitate then? Here I should risk my head, and the dice are loaded against me; nor does the deed imply "moral turpitude." Stalin's associates regarded him as a martyred hero when the law of the country, less cogent than Thelema, sat heavily on his devoted head. My retort, however, is convincing and final. Robbery in