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.
319 matching pages
Page 1 of 161929 · PDF PAGE 72
…or example, I worked out a route up the Aiguille du Gant from the Montanvers. This mountain had never been climbed fairly. The ordinary way up is a matter of engineering by means of pitons and wire ropes. I did not keep my knowledge to myself in order to have the glory of making the first ascent. I indicated the way up to other climbers and was absolutely overjoyed when two Austrian amateurs made the climb. In the same way, I am perfectly satisfied at having broken down the dishonest and imbecile traditions of Badminton and only regret that I …
1929 · PDF PAGE 525
…of what was on the surface quite ordinary literature, but implying the Law of Thelema as the basis of right thought and conduct. In this way I managed to insinuate my message perhaps more effectively than could possibly have been done by any amount of visible argument and persuasion. The Scrutinies of Simon Iff are perfectly good detective stories, yet they not only show a master of the Law as competent to solve the subtlest problems by considerations based upon the Law, but the way in which crime and unhappiness of all sorts may be traced to a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 226
226 Ten minutes later "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill" and looked around me "with a wild surmise". I knew where I had hit him by the way he limped, and that he was no more put out of action than Battling Siki, if I had trod on his pet corn. I knew that a buffalo bull can conceal himself in the Ceylon jungle as effectively as a bug in a barracks, and I knew that he was perfectly informed of my character and intention. I knew that I was nervous by the way I gripped my rifle (my principal battery, by the way, was a 10-bore Paradox with lead and…
1929 · PDF PAGE 41
…re was no need to create phantasms of a perverse or unrealizable satisfaction. It is important to emphasize this point, because I have always appeared to my contemporaries as a very extraordinary individual obsessed by fantastic passions. But such were not in any way natural to me. The moment the pressure was relieved every touch of the abnormal was shed off instantly. The impulse to write poetry disappeared almost completely at such periods. I had not even any of the ordinary ambitions of young men. I was content to enjoy sport without wishing…
1929 · PDF PAGE 69
69 The wild man wends his weary way To a strange and lonely pump. Yet it seemed somehow familiar. It drew nigh; yes, it was Arthur Ellis. I expressed surprise; but he said that he had felt so much better he thought he might as well come down, but it had been a long and terrible day. He had started at dawn. This was absurd, as it was only a couple of hours' easy walking from the hut. Ah yes, he said, but he had come down over the snout of the glacier and he had had to cut steps all the way --- no more glissading for him! This story was again rat…
1929 · PDF PAGE 35
35 Here, by the way, is a curious point. These bigots are so inconsistent that I have never been able to follow the working of their minds. There is a great deal of doctrine in "The Ancient Mariner" which outrages every tenet of the Plymouth Brethren, but my mother does not appear to have taken offence at that. My only suggestion is that she detested snakes for Freudian reasons; she had probably met them in dreams and had therefore good reason (from her point of view) for identifying them with the devil in his most objectionable form. My mother…
1929 · PDF PAGE 516
…extreme difficulty of framing any satisfactory hypothesis to explain the occurrence. My observation turned out, therefore, to be (in its way) a matter of primary importance. I ventured to suggest an explanation of my own; but Professor Thompson felt that, while it covered the facts of the case and even those of previous observations, it involved a conception of electricity which was not easy to reconcile with the implications of certain other phenomena. In the course of our correspondence, Professor Thompson communicated several extremely subtl…
1929 · PDF PAGE 179
…stals. Rocks perched on {304} ice become very hot in an incredibly short time and break loose from the ice on which they are poised in a way which takes men of merely Alpine experience by surprise. My Mexican expedition proved invaluable in enabling me to foresee these phenomena. But the first warning was given on this march when two enormous stones which, anywhere else, would have stayed where they were for years, fell about twenty yards in front of me and the advance guard! When I say Korophon, it must not be imagined that it means anything m…
1929 · PDF PAGE 68
… attempting the traverse. As I was to go down last, he was carrying the rucksack with our provisions. We made several attempts to find a way down the Zinal face; but always the slopes steepened until it became evident that they pitched over, and we had to retrace our steps. Ellis, however, was very annoyed at my caution and wanted to glissade, which was a proposal about as reasonable as jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Presently he made an excuse for taking off the rope and retired behind a rock while I sat down and lit my pipe. I was aroused by a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 325
…ing how lamentably prone humanity is to anthropomorphism, it seems unfortunate. But we cannot deny the justice of the symbolism, and the way to eliminate the disadvantages and dangers of the situation is to extend the connection of the word "love" to include all phenomena of the uniting of opposites, as is done in The Book of the Law. Hardly anything is more important for the aspirant than to get rid of the tendency to make God in his Own image. One should learn to regard the formula of Yod, Hé, Vau as universal, not as generalized from the rep…
1929 · PDF PAGE 470
… of Ličge. I looked at the map and I couldn't reconcile it with the folds of our ragged line of absent-minded beggars. I didn't like the way in which the journalists excused our "contemptible little army" for running away because of the treachery of French generals who were always being shot at sunrise, and always subsequently writing to the papers to say how much they liked the war. My phlebitis affected merely my left leg and the fact that I was a sharp-shooter and an {743} old artilleryman didn't interest the War Office. I couldn't use my le…
1929 · PDF PAGE 70
…ere climb. The conditions were very bad and Gregor was quite unequal to this class of climbing, so that I had to pull him up most of the way. We were very late on the mountain in consequence. I had no idea of the best way down, but decided to try the short and precipitous route which leads to the level glacier above the Vuibez Sracs. The descent of a difficult mountain is always awkward when the second man is not up to the mark. He cannot go down last because of the danger; and in going down first he is pretty sure to take the wrong road, wher…
1929 · PDF PAGE 256
… the deputy-commmissioner, the Maharaja of Kuch Behar and all sorts of delightful people. Everyone was only too willing to help in every way. I wanted to start for the mountain as early in the season as possible. We had reliable information as to what the weather on the higher peaks was likely to be. We had no Zojila to cross, no forty marches to the foot of the peak but twelve or fifteen at the outside. If we found it continuously bad, one could retreat into the valley and recuperate almost as one can in the Alps, for Tsetam is only about twel…
1929 · PDF PAGE 122
122 Our difficulties were in some ways severe. The canned food procurable in Mexico City was of inferior quality and many years old at that. Eckenstein {214} 1. WEH Note: AL I,44 was constantly ill with diarrhea and I was not much better. Finally food gave out altogether and our last three days we had literally nothing but champagne and Danish butter. We didn't care much; we had done what we had set out to do. Besides, I had learnt a great deal about camp life, the fine points of glissading, and the use of Steigeisen. In 1899, at the Montanvers…
1929 · PDF PAGE 181
… disease as nephritis. The general tone of the blackness of the debris is peculiarly unsympathetic. There was no difficulty in finding a way up the snout. I knew that the first camp, Liligo, was on the left bank, so moved over in that direction. (German professors two hundred years hence are requested not to confuse the name of this parau with the "little-go" at Cambridge, though both are alike first stages on a lonely climb leading to nowhere.) The glacier was a complete revelation to me. The difference in scale had merely multiplied one's dif…
1929 · PDF PAGE 369
… the thirteenth of December. Two days later I left Plymouth by the Marlborough. {593} 65 In London I put my foot down at once by taking away my daughter until Rose agreed to follow the doctor's instructions and get rid of her dipsomania once and for all. She capitulated and the necessary measures were taken. This left me free for my proposed Retirement, which I decided to undertake in Paris rather than London. The details of every single minute of my life for the next fortnight are accurately recorded in "John St. John". Here I need only say th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 193
…iles. So much for mere crossing. But the next day we were only three hours and ten minutes actual going to Shigar, which in the ordinary way is three long marches. The pace of the current varies enormously. Sometimes we were kept half an hour at a time spinning about amid contending eddies; sometimes we were flung violently down the stream at over twenty miles an hour. The sensation is extraordinarily exhilarating --- the motion, the imminent peril, the intoxication of the air, the majesty of the background, but above all, the beatific realizat…
1929 · PDF PAGE 162
…men, starvation, animals or other causes. 5. All members of the party pledge themselves to have nothing whatever to do with women in any way that is possibly avoidable: not to interfere in any way whatever with native prejudices and beliefs. This clause shall take effect from the accomplishment of (3). 6. Any dispute arising under this agreement shall be subjected to arbitration in the usual way and shall not be subject to appeal at law or otherwise. 7. Should a third, fourth or fifth man join the party, he shall sign this agreement before he i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 183
…in. The obvious exception to the otherwise invariable rule of practical inaccessibility was the Golden Throne, a minor point of which Conway claims to have climbed. I was very disgusted at the bad taste of some of the coolies who had been with him in saying that he had never been on the mountain at all, but turned back at the foot of the ice fall. How could such common creatures presume to decide a delicate scientific question of this sort? My camp at Doksam was pitched on the borders of a good-sized lake {311} between the mountains and the gla…
1929 · PDF PAGE 245
…he feat that I was at pains to go round and look at the place again from below. My judgment had not deceived me --- there was no sort of way up --- yet the torn moss and a few fresh broken bits of rotten rock proved his passage. To this day I regard the facts as the least credible of any that have ever come my way. When Rose and I first arrived at Boleskine, we had made a sort of sporadic effort to carry out some of the injunction of Aiwass. We had arranged before leaving Egypt for the "abstruction" of the Stele of Revealing. I did not understa…