Magick Without Tears

WORK 471 "gods" or "Masters" -whatever name you like. And that, I suppose, is what you may call the premise major of my syllogism. The minor, I confess, is not so apodeictic. No one, I suppose, is going to point proudly to the present state of human affairs, as evidence that we are all becoming wiser and nobler every minute, as people did seventy years ago. In fact, one may suspect that the majority of well-instructed men expect nothing but that History will repeat itself, and our civilization go the way of all the others whose ruins we dig up in every quarter of the earth. Well, if we have to wait for the calamity, and for evolution to begin all over again in a number of centuries-with luck!-one thing is at least quite certain: we can do nothing about it. Any form of activity must be as futile and as fatuous as any other; and the only sensible philosophy must be "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Is there a conceivable alternative? Well, consider the cause of the impending collapse. It is quite simple: Knowledge is loose, without control of Will and of In t elligence. (How clearly the Qabalah states and demonstrates this doctrine!) Now, these qualities in us having failed to measure up to the situation of the world, one hope remains; to get into communication with those "gods" or "masters" whose existence was demonstrated in my Premise Major and learn from Them. But is this possible? Tradition and experience unite to assert that it is so; moreover, various forms of technique for accomplishing this are at our disposal. This is what is called The Great Work; and it is abundantly clear that no other aim is worth pursuit . So much for the argument; it will be agreed readily enough that to put it into practice we shall need an Alphabet, a