Magick Without Tears

372 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS then redoubled my practice of it. What he said came out right; one day I found that I had acquired the knack of it. Now with these semi-pupils of yours the same thing probably applies. The point you raise in particular as baffling them is the getting on to the astral plane. It is not much good explaining why the failure occurs, or at what point it occurs; the only thing that is any use is for the pupil to go on and on and on eternally. He must find out for himself where the snag is, and he must continue his experiment until he acquires the knack. All this should be perfectly obvious; the same sort of thing applies to every kind of game which you know. There is a particular knack for instance in putting. It is not that your calculations are wrong, it is not that your stance is wrong, it is not that your grip is wrong, it is that for some reason or other you fail to co-ordinate all these various factors in the problem; and sooner or later the moment comes when it appears to you quite natural to succeed in getting out of the body, or in opening the eyes on the astral plane, or in getting hold of the particular form of elemental energy which has until that moment escaped you. I ought incidentally to mention that this sudden illumination-that is not quite the right word but I cannot think of a better one-is quite different to the sudden confidence which takes hold of one in the Yoga practices. The more I think of it the more I feel that the question of sensitiveness is of the greatest importance. In Yoga practices one does not, at least as far as my experience goes, come against the delicacy that one does in all magical and astral practices. The reason for that is, I think, quite obvious. All the Yoga practices are ultimately of the protective type, whereas with magical and astral practices one is exposing oneself to the contact of exterior (or apparently exterior) forces. In neither case however is there any sort of reason at all for discouragement; and as I said above the cure in all cases is apparently the same. In one way or another the veil is rent, the pupil becomes