Magick Without Tears

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