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Page 1 of 11930 · PDF PAGE 46
… it race to the finish. Here arises another technical difficulty. One has to make 16 rows of dots; and, especialiy for the beginner, the mind has to grapple with the appréhension lest the hand fail to execute the required number. It is also troubled by fearing to exceed; but excess does not matter. Extra Unes are simply null and void, so that the best plan is to banish that thought, and make sure only of not stopping too soon.1 The lines being traced, the operation is over as far as spiritual qualifies are required, for a time. The process of s…
1930 · PDF PAGE 45
…e spirit. Before tracing the dashes which are to détermine the four “Mothers”, he must strictly examine himself. He must banish from his mind every thought which can possibly act as an attachment to his proposed partner. He must banish ail thoughts which concern himself, those of appré¬ hension no less than those of ardour. He must carry his introspec¬ tion as far as possible. He must observe with ail the subtletv at his command whether it pains him to abandon any of these thoughts. So long as his mind is stirred, however slightly, by one singl…
1930 · PDF PAGE 43
…tion without retaining any. It becomes poisonous when its oxygen is defiled by passing through human lungs. There is a peculiar frame of mind necessary to successful divination. The conditions of the problem are difficult. It is obviously necessary for the mind of the diviner to be concentrated absolutely upon his question. Any intrusive thought will confuse the oracle as certainly as the reader of a newspaper is confused I. The apparent high sanction for the error would fortify the obstinacy of the mule. — 163
1930 · PDF PAGE 52
… is itself as subject to change without notice” as a musical programme. Divination, in the nature of things, can do no more than put the mind of the querent into conscious connection with another mind whose knowledge of the subject at issue is to bis own as that of an expert to a layman. The expert is not infallible. 1 he client may put his question in a misleading manner, or even base it on a completely erroneous conception of the facts. He may misunder- stand the expert’s answer, and he may misinterpret its purport. Apart from ail this, exclu…
1930 · PDF PAGE 42
…h of personal preference will deflect the needle from the pôle of trnth in the answer. Unies? the diviner hâve banished utterly from his mind the minutest atom of interest in the answer to his question, he is almost certain to influence that answer in favour of his personal inclinations. The psycho-analyst will recall the fact that dreams are phantas- mal représentations of the unconscious Will of the sleeper, and that not only are they images of that Will instead of représent¬ ations of objective truth, but the image itself is confused by a th…
1930 · PDF PAGE 81
in handy later as weapons, in this fundamental training of the mind. It îs much better to compel the mind to busy itself with root ideas which do not mean very much to the child, because you are not trying to excite the brain, but to drill it. For this reason, ail the hest mincis liave been trained by preliminary study of classics and mathematics. The same principle applies to the training of the body. The original exercises should be of a character to train the muscles generally to perform any kind or work, rather than to train them for some s…
1930 · PDF PAGE 9
…ed, so far as external things are concerned. The whole secret may be summarised in these four words: “Enflame thyself in praying.” 1 The mind must be exalted until it loses consciousness of self. The Magician must be carried forward blindly by a force which, though. in him and of him, is by no means that which he in his normal State of consciousness calls I. Just as the poet, the lover, the artist, is carried out of himself in a Creative frenzy, so must it be for the Magician. It is impossible to lay down rules for the obtaining of this spécial…
1930 · PDF PAGE 79
…créatures He ever met, the most prominent of English spiritists (a journalist and pacifist of more than European famé) had the filthiest mind and the foulest mouth. He would break off any conversation to tell a stupid smutty story, and could hardi y conceive of any society assembling for any other purpose than “phallic orgies7’, whatever they may be. Utterly incapable of keeping to a subject, he would drag the conversation down again and again to the sole subject of which he really thought — sex and sex-perversions and sex and sex and sex and s…
1930 · PDF PAGE 47
…adore it as a god, uncritically: aSpeak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Il must be allowed to impose iis intrinsic individuality on the mind, to put its fingers independently on whatever notes it pleases. In this way one obtains an impression of the true purport of the answerj and one obtains it armed with a sanction superior to any sensible suggestions. It cornes from and to a part of the individual which is independent of the influence of environment ; is adjusted to that environment by true necessity, and not by the artifices of such adapta…
1930 · PDF PAGE 62
…the Canon of the Mass, and the chapter of “defects”. 2. The Word Chastity is used by initiâtes to signify a certain State of soûl and of mind déterminant of a certain habit of body which is nowise identical with what is commonly understood. Chastity in the true magical sense of the word is inconceivable to those who are not wholly emancipated from the obsession of sex. — 182 —
1930 · PDF PAGE 36
… does not matter to the theory whether the communicating spirit so-called is an objective entity or a concealed portion of the diviner’s mind.) We assume that such intelligences are able to reply correctly — within limits — to the questions asked. 2. We postulate that it is possible to construct a compendium of hieroglyphs sufficiently elastic in meaning to include every possible idea, and that one or more of these may always be taken to represent any idea. We assume that any of these hieroglyphics will be understood by the intelligences with w…
1930 · PDF PAGE 14
It may be that tiie place or time is wrong. One cannot easily evoke water-spirits in the Sahara, or salamanders in the English Lake District. Hismael will not readily appear when Jupiter is below the horizon. 1 2 In order to counteract a natural deficiency of this sort, one would hâve to supply a sufficient quantity of the proper kind of material. One cannot make bricks without straw. With regard to invocations of the Gods, such considérations do not apply. The Gods are beyond most material conditions. It is necessarv to hll the heart and mïnd …
1930 · PDF PAGE 51
…it obedience to its counsels careless as to whether or no they may land him in disaster, is a means admirably efficacious of keeping his mind untroubled by external impressions, and therefore in the proper condition to receive the réitérant strokes of rapture with which the love of his Angel ravishes him. We hâve now mapped out the boundaries of possibility and propnety which define the physical and political geography of divination. The student must guard himself constantly against supposing that this art affords any absolute means of discover…
1930 · PDF PAGE 54
…on in Nature why the apparently chance combinations of half-a-dozen sticks oï tortoise-shell should not be so linked both with the human mind and with the entire structure of the Universe that the observation of their fall should not enable us to rneasure ail things in heaven and earth. With one piece of curved glass we hâve discovered uncounted galaxies of suns; with another, endless orders of existence in the infinitésimal. With the prism we hâve analysed light so that matter and force hâve become intelligible only as forms of light. With a r…
1930 · PDF PAGE 41
…d, bar a stroke of apoplexy. But, even suppose we are safe from deceit, how can we know that the question has really been put to another mind, understood rightly, and answered from knowledge ? It is obviously possible to check one’s operations by clairvoyance, but this is rather like buying a safe to keep a brick in. Expérience is the only teacher. One acquires what one may almost calî a new sense. One feels in one’s self whether one is right or not. The diviner must develop this sense. It resembles the exquisite sensibility of touch which is f…
1930 · PDF PAGE 53
…pretended to do more than they could. To divine concerning a matter is little more than to calculate probabilities. We obtain the use of minds who hâve access ro knowledge beyond ours, but not to omniscience. Hru; the gréai angel set over the Tarot, is beyond us as we are beyond the antj but, for ail we know, the knowledge of Hru is excelled by some mightier mind in the same proportion. Nor hâve we any warrant for accusing Hru of ignorance or error if we read the Taroi to our own delusion. He may hâve known, he may hâve spoken trulyj the fault …
1930 · PDF PAGE 44
…urer sign of all-round success than this ability to put the whole of one’s powers at the service of any type of task. With regard to the mind, again, it would seem that concentra¬ tion on the question makes more difficult the necessary detachment from it. Once again, the diviner stands in need of a considérable degree of attainment in the practices of méditation. He must hâve succeeded in destroying the tendency of the ego to interfère with the ohject of thought. He must be able to conceive of a thing out of ail relation with anything eise. The…
1930 · PDF PAGE 78
…n to believe died with some teacher of the past, it may be useful to evoke the “shade” of such a one, or read the “Akasic record” of his mind. 1 If this be done it must be done properly very much on the lines of the évocation of Apollonius of Tyana, which Eliphaz Levi performed. 2 The utmost care must be taken to prevent personation of the “shade”. It is of course easy, but can rarely be advisable, to evoke the shade of a suicide, or of one violently slain or suddenly dead. Of what use is such an operation, save to gratify curiosity or vanity ?…
1930 · PDF PAGE 50
…especially true of divination, because the essence of the horror of not knowing one’s Angel is the utter bewilderment and anguish of the mind, complicated by the persécution of the body, and envenomed by the ache of the soûl. One puts the wrong ques¬ tions, and puts them wrong 3 gets the wrong answers, judges them wrong, and acts wrongly upon them. One must nevertheless persist, aspiring with ardour towards one’s Angel, and comforted I. No intelligence of the type that opérâtes divination is a complété Microscosm as Man is. He knows in perfecti…