FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
44 matching pages
Page 1 of 31909 · PDF PAGE 132
…ut That which is behind the shadow—show, the Cause of all, the Quintessence of All, the Transcender of all. And Thee I seek insistently; though Thou hide Thy- self in the Heaven, there will I seek Thee out ; though Thou wrap Thyself in the Flames οἵthe Abyss, even there will I pursue Thee; Though Thou make Thee a secret place in the Heart of the Rose or at the Arms of the Cross that spanneth all-embracing Space; though Thou be in the inmost part of matter, or behind the Veil of mind; Thee will I follow; Thee will I over- take; Thee will I gathe…
1909 · PDF PAGE 134
… little comedy—two essays—a dozen poems or so—two or three short stories—odds and ends of one sort and another: it’s a miserable record, though the Tragedy is good enough to last a life. It marks an epoch in literature, though nobody else will guess it for fifty years yet. The travel, too, has been rubbish. It’s been a petty, peddling year. The one absolute indication is: on no account live otherwise than alone. But it is 1035; these considerations, though in a way pertaining to the Work, are not the Work itself. Let me begin to inflame myselfinf…
1909 · PDF PAGE 51
JOHN ST. JOHN 10.42. though, with a little scourging, torturing, and branding by fire. . . . Anything for a quiet life! But scourging oneself is not easy with a robe on; and though one could take it off, there is this point to be considered : that one can never (except by a regrettable accident) hurt oneself more than one wants to. In other words, it is impossible thus to inflict pain, and so flagellants have been rightly condemned as mere volup- tuaries. The only way to do so would be to inflict some torture whose severity one could not gauge at t…
1909 · PDF PAGE 25
1 1.35. 6.55. 7.0- 7.16. 7.30. 7.50. 8.5. JOHN ST. JOHN And indeed, though I tried to continue the mantra with its high aspiration to know Adonai, I must have slept almost at once. The Third Day Now the day being gloriously broken, I awoke with some weariness, not feeling clean and happy, not burning with love unto my Lord Adonai, though ashamed indeed for that thrice or four times in the night I had been awakened by this loyal body, urging me to rise and meditate—and my weak will bade it be at ease and take its rest—oh, wretched man! slave of …
1909 · PDF PAGE 98
…ore the Lord Adonai. Home again ; have done odd necessary things, and am ready to work. I feel slack; and I feel that I have been slack, though probably the Record shows a fair amount of work done. But I am terribly bruised by the Great Fall; these big things leave the body and mind no worse, apparently ; but they hurt the Self, and later that is reflected into the lower parts of the man as insanity or death. I must attain, or . . . an end of John St. John. An end of him, one way or the other, then l Good-bye, John ! Ten minutes wasted in sheer …
1909 · PDF PAGE 36
…Angel, within the Pyramid already duly prepared by DCLXXI. Alas! in vain have I tried even the supreme ritual of Awaiting the Beloved, although once I thought Ah ! give unto Thy beloved in sleep! How ashamed I should be, though! For an earthly lover one would be on tiptoe of excitement, trembling at every sound, eager, afraid . . . I will, however, rise and open (as for a symbol) the door and the window. Oh that the door of my heart were ever open! For He is always there, and always eager to come in. I rise and open unto my Beloved. . . . May i…
1909 · PDF PAGE 44
…apitulate L.V.X. Lux, the Light of the Cross). 1.55. 3-55- 42 Thence one might proceed to some symbolic passage through the 6“: 5° grade—though of course that grade is really symbolic of this soul—journey, not vire versui— and through 7°=4° ; so perhaps—-if one could only dare to hope it !—to the 8°=3° attainment Certainly what little I have done so far pertains no higher than Minor adeptship, though I have used higher formula: in the course of my working. My Prana is acting in a feverish manner ; a mixture of fatigue and energy. This is not go…
1909 · PDF PAGE 73
…ould serve to stimulatemy devotion. For the information of the Z.A.M., I may explain that this ritual pertained to Saturn in Libra; and, though right enough in its own plane, is a dog— faced demon in this operation. Is it, though? I am so blind that I can no longer decide the simplest problems. Else, I see so well, and am so balanced, that I see both sides of every question. In chess-blindness one used to abjure the game. I never tried to stick it through ; Iwish Ihad. Anyhow, I have to stick this through I O Lord of the Eye, let thine Eye be e…
1909 · PDF PAGE 87
8.53. 9.30. JOHN ST. JOHN That, though, was only a young mild devil, though of the same bad brood. It said: "Is there any Path or Attainment? Have you been fooled all along ? " But to-night‘s thought struck at my own integrity, at the inmost truth of the soul and of Adonai. As I said, there is no answer to it; and as these seven days have left me fairly master of the fortress, I caught him young, and assigned him promptly to the oubliette. I put down this—not as a “ pose "—but because the business is so gigantic. It encourages me immensely; for…
1909 · PDF PAGE 102
…e could not pull the trigger. This must have gone on for some time; his agony of failure was awful; {or he knew that he was failing; but though he cried a thousand times unto Adonai with the Voice of Death, he could not—he could not. Again and again he stood at the gate, and could not enter. And the Violet Flames of Ajna triumphed over him. Then Brenner said: “ Let us take a little rest!”—oh irony l—and he came down from his throne, staggering with fatigue. . . . If you can conceive of all his anger and despair! His pen, writing this, forms a l…
1909 · PDF PAGE 71
…N digestion), drink, other physical impulses, weather, and so on, and comparing them with the curve of mystic enthusiasm and attainment. Though it is perhaps true that perfect health and (Bien- étre are the bases of any true trance or rapture, it seems unlikely that mere exuberance of the former can excite the latter. In other words there is probably some first matter of the work which is not anything we know of as bodily. On my return to London, I must certainly put the matter before more experienced mathematicians, and if possible, get a graph…
1909 · PDF PAGE 28
…ofoundly affect the sexual pro— cess : how and why I do not yet certainly know. 2.45. Rubbish! everything perfectly normal. 26 Difficult, though, to keep mantram going. Am sitting on the brink of the big fountain in the Luxembourg. This deadness of the whole system continues. To explain. Normally, if the thought be energetically directed to almost any point in the body, that point is
1909 · PDF PAGE 122
5.4. 5.30. 120 THE EQUINOX Mastery of the Reason), though it is commonly called 7°=4". It appeared to him at that period that so much talk and time were wasted on discussing the nature of the Attainment—a discussion foredoomed to failure, in the absence of all Knowledge, and in view of the Self- Contradictory Nature of the Reasoning Faculty, as applied to Metaphysics—that it would be wiser to drop the whole question, and concentrate on a simple Magical Progress. The Next Step for humanity in general was then “ the Knowledge and Conversation of …
1909 · PDF PAGE 43
…rote the Ritual in verse, in the Egyptian Language. I don’t think very well. Time must show: also experience. I’d recite Tenny- son if I thought it would give Samadhil Now more mantra, though by the Lord I’m getting sick of it. It occurs to me, now that I am seeing my way in the Operation a little more clearly, that one might consider the First Day as Osiris Slain 44, the Second as that of the Mourning of Isis U, the third as that of the Triumph of Apophis V, and to-day that of Osiris Risen X ; these four days being perfect in themselves as a 5…
1909 · PDF PAGE 133
…ence, the Perfume and the Vision, even as it is written in the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. Soon this became a sleep, though the will was eager and concentrated. The sleep, too, was deep and refreshing. I will go to dinner. Arrived, with mantra, at the Cafe de Versailles. ἑdoz. Marennes, Rable de Lievre, citron presse. I am now able to concentrate OFF the Path for a little. Whether this means that I am simply slipping back into the world, or that I am more balanced on, and master of, the Path, I cannot say. Have walked home, …
1909 · PDF PAGE 130
1.45. 2.5. 2.22. 128 THE EQUINOX utterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. It also struck me that this Operation is (among other things) an attempt to prove the proposition : Reward is the direct and immediate consequence of Work. Of all the holy illuminated Men of God of my acquaintance, I am the only one that holds this opinion. But I think that this Record, when I have time to go through it, and stand at some distance, to get the per— spective, will be proved a conc…
1909 · PDF PAGE 124
…22 THE EQUINOX bered at all. I have gone to bed, and shall take things in hand seriously, ifit kills me. Since 9.17 have done Pranayama, though allowing myself some irregularities in the way of occasional omission 01 a Kambhakham. ’Tis very hard to stick to it. I find myself, at the end of above sentence, automatically crawling into bed. No, John! Have been trying to extract some sense from that extraordinary treatise on mysticism, “ Konx Om Pax." Another failure, but an excusable one. I will now beseech Adonai as best I may to give me back my l…
1909 · PDF PAGE 104
…e up and working with a circle every night. But O.M. thinks that they show an excited and unbalanced condition of John St. John‘s brain, though he is almost too cowed to express an opinion at all, even were the question, Is grass green ? Every small snatch of sleep, without exception, in the last three or {our days, has these images. The ideal condition seems likely to be perfect oblivion —or (in the Adept) is the Tamo-Guna, the Power of Elemental Darkness, broken once and for ever, so that His sleep is vivid and rational as another man’s wakin…
1909 · PDF PAGE 118
…iscipline. There is less headache, and more sense of being on the Path—that is the only way one finds of expressing it. Worse and worse ; though pose even better held. In despair returned to a simple practice, the holdingof the mind to a single imagined object; in this case the Triangle surmounted by the Cross. It seems quite easy to do nowadays; why shouldn’t it lead to The Result? It used to be supposed to do so. Might be worth trying anyway; things can hardly be worse than they are. Or, one might go over to the Hammam, and have a long bath an…
1909 · PDF PAGE 135
…at the Altar . . . This holy inspired book (delivered unto me in the winter of last year) was now at last understanded of me; for it is, though I knew it not, a complete scheme of this Operation. For this cause I will add this book Ararita at the end of the Manuscript. [This has not been permitted. The Book Ararita will be issued by the Α.“. Α:. in due course—En] I also demanded of mine Angel the Writing upon the Lamen of Silver; 21 Writing of the veritable Elixir and supernal Dew. And it was granted unto me. Then subtly, easily, simply, imperc…