Magick Without Tears

60 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS The squares are quite separate. The whole world outside the square D is the world of no dogs: outside the square S, the world of no-study. But suppose now that I want to make the Zero absolute, like our 0° , I must say "No dogs are not in my study." Or, "There is no absence-of-dog in my study." Tha t is the same as saying: "Some dogs are in my study"; diagram again: In Diagram I, "the world where no dogs are" included the whole of my study; in Diagram 2 that absence-of-dog is no longer there; so one or more of them must have got in somehow. That's that ; I know it may be a little difficult at first; fortunately there is a different way- the Chinese way- of stating the theorem in very much simpler terms. S. The Chinese, like ourselves, begin with the idea of "Absolute Nothing." They "make an effort, and call it the Tao" ; but that is exactly what the Tao comes to mean, when we examine it. They see quite well, as we have done above, that merely to assert Nothing is not to explain the Universe; and they proceed to do so by means of a mathematical equation even simpler than ours, involving as it does no operations beyond simple addition and subtraction. They say "Nothing obviously means Nothing; it h •. .i no qualities nor quantities." (The Advaitists said the same, and then stultified themselves completely by calling it One!) "But," continue the sages of the Middle Kingdom, "it is always possible to reduce any expression to Nothing by taking any two equal and opposite terms." (Thus n + (-n) = 0.) "We ought therefore to be able to get any expression that we want from Nothing; we merely have to be careful that the terms shall be precisely opposite and equal." (0 = n + (-n).) This then they did, and began to diagrammatize the Universe as the I- a pair of opposites, the ·Yang or active Male, and the Yin or passive Female, (See Appendix I The Chinese Cosmos)