Magick Without Tears

69 Original Sin Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. It was at Dover. I had passed the Customs Inspector. Turning back, I said: "But perhaps I ought to have declared my Browning?" Much agitated, he muttered , "However did I come to miss that?" and began all over again. I helped him out : "You see, you were thinking of pistols, I of poetry ." (There is a lesson in that!) And now you-of all people!-fire him off at me. I laugh! I wondered when you were going to pull me up, and send me packing to my Skeat about what "Sin" means. O.K. Police routine does beat the gifted amateur. Sin, astonishingly , means real! Curtius tells us "Language regards the guilty man as the man who it was." Then , what is 'guilt'? A.S. gyit , trespass; in our own Thelemic language, "deviation from (especially in the matter of excess, trespasser) the True Will." Please take notice that most of the words which denote misconduct imply wandering, either from the home or from the path: error, debauch, wrong (=twisted), wry, evil (excessive) detraguer, go astray, and several others. So I too leap into the breach with Curtius, and point out that "Language itself asserts the doctrine of the True Will." But what says The Book of the Law? It is at pains to define Sin in plain terms : "The word of Sin is Restriction." (AL, I: 41) From the context it seems clear that this refers more especially to interference with the will of another. 415