476 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
to-day-in the times of "evangelical revival" the number was 
fantastic-who got there through fear that they had somehow 
committed 
that aforesaid "blasphemy 
against the Holy 
Ghost ." The unknown again. The Bible does not tell us what 
it is; only that it is unpardonable . Nor Grace, nor Faith, nor 
Predestination avail in the least ; for all you know , you may 
have committed it. Reassurance is impossible ; no ceinture de 
chastete avails to avert this danger. 
Again with drugs, it is the unknown which is the horrific 
factor. Most people get their information on the subject from 
the yellowest of yellow newspapers , magazines and novels. So 
darkly deep is their ignorance that they do not know what 
the word means-like us so often, yes? Wide sections of the 
U.S.A. are scared of tea and coffee. They blench when you 
point out that bicarbonate of soda is a drug just as much as 
cocaine; at the same time they literally shovel in the really 
dangerous Aspirin , to say nothing of the thousand Patent 
Medicines blared at them from every radio - as if the Press 
were 
not enough 
to poison the whole population! 
they gasp when they learn that of all classes, the 
first place among "drug addicts" is that of the doctor. 
But the crisis in which fear becomes phobia is the 
unreasoning aversion, the shuddering of panic , above all, the 
passionate refusal to learn anything about "drugs ," to analyse 
the conditions , still less to face them; and the spasmodic 
invention of imaginary terrors , as if the real dangers were not 
enough to serve as a warning. 
Now why? Surely because in the sub-conscious lies an 
instinct that in these obscure medicines indeed lies the key of 
some forbidden sanctuary. There is a fascination as irrational 
and therefore as strong, as the fear. Here is the point at which 
they link up with sex and religion . Oh, how well nigh 
almighty is the urgency to him who reads those few great 
writers who understood 
the subject from experience : de 
Quincey, Ludlow, Poe and Baudelaire: into whom burn the 
pointed parallels between their adventures and those of all 
the mystics, East and West! 
The worst of this correspondence-form 
is that you are 
always asking simple elementary questions which require half