Magick Without Tears

74 Obstacles on the Path Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Peccavi! And how! But my excuse is good, and I will try to make amends . First, a little counter-attack-your letter is so rambling and diffuse that at first I couldn't make out what you were getting at, and at last decided that it is much too random to reproduce, or even to deal with in detail. I shall simply formulate the case for the Prosecution, plead guilty, and appeal for clemency. The gravamen is that the Path of the Wise is gay with flowers, gilded with kiosks, and beset with snares; that every step is the Abode of Terror and Rapture-and all that! Yet I habitually write in the manner of a drunken dominie! You "gaped for Aeschylus, and got Theognis." I tempted you, it seems with The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz, its incomparable mystery and glamour, its fugitive beauty, its ineffable romance, its chivalry and its adventure, pellucid gleams as of sunlight under the sea, vast brooding wings of horror overshadowing the fimament, yet with strong Starlight constant over-head. And then I let you down! You did expect at least something of the atmosphere of The Arabian Nights; if not so high, of Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter; of Rabelais, Meinhold, de la Motte Fouque; and the Morte d'Arthur in the later times, of Balzac, 446