FAMILY 
335 
on the total renunciation of all family ties. He would not 
even allow a man to attend his father's funeral! 
Is the magical tradition less rigid? 
Not on your life! 
The one serious grimoire of the Middle Ages is The Book 
of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. He makes no 
bones about it. He even condescends to point out the family 
as the most serious of all the obstacles to the performance of 
the Operation, and he gives the correct psychological reasons 
why this should be so. You said it yourself! "Family 
pressure" was your pungent and pertinent expression. Just 
so. 
I think that "family" should include any body of persons 
with common interests which they expect or wish you to 
share. One's old school or university, the regiment, the golf 
club, the business, the party, the country: any of these may 
dislike very much your absorption in affairs alien to their 
own. But the family is the classic type, because its pull is so 
potent and persistent. It began when you gave your first yell; 
your personality is deliberately wrenched and distorted to 
the family code; and their zoology is so inadequate that they 
always feel sure that their Ugly Duckling is a Black Sheep. 
Even for their Fool they find a use: he can be invaluable in 
the Church or the Army, where docile incompetence is the 
sure key to advancement. 
Curse them! They are always in the way. 
In the Brahman caste, the aspirant to Yoga makes it a rule 
to fulfil his duties to the family and the State; once those 
jobs are definitely done, he cuts the painter, and becomes 
Sannyasi. Many a Maharajah, many a Wazir, to say nothing of 
less responsible people, plan their lives from their earliest 
days of wearing the sacred Cord as Brahmacharyi, with these 
ambitions carefully mapped out; and when the right moment 
comes for him to disappear into the jungle-the 
rest is 
Silence. 
A sound scheme: that is, provided that one has full 
confidence in the General Theory. But we Caucasians happen