Magick Without Tears

454 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS My dear child, that is all very sensibly put; and the answer is that Convenience would decide. Then you go on, after a digression: Then how are They acting at present? What impact has the new Word, Thelema,made upon the planet? What are we to expect as a result? And can we poor benighted outsiders help Them in any way? I know it's "cheek" to ask. Then turn the other cheek, and repeat the question! I will do my best to make it all clear. But do not forget that I am myself completely in the dark with regard to the special functions of most of my colleagues. To begin, then! Achtung! I am going to be hard-boiled; my first act is to enlist the Devil himself in our ranks, and take the Materialistic Interpretation of History from Karl Marx, and accept economic laws as the manifest levers which determine the fortune of one part of the earth or another. I shall take exception only by showing that these principles are secondary: oil in Texas, nitrates on the Pacific slope of the Andes, sulphur in Louisiana (which put Etna's nose out of joint by making it cheaper for the burghers of Messina to import it from four thousand miles away instead of digging it out of their own back garden) even coal and timber, upset very few apple-carts until individual genius had found for these commodities such uses as our grandfathers never dreamed. The technical developments of almost every form of wealth are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War. In the "To-day and to-morrow" series is an essay called Ouroboros, by Garet Garrett; one of the most shrewd and deep-delving analyses of economics ever written. May I condense him crudely? Mass Production for Profit fails when