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Page 1 of 31907 · PDF PAGE 234
… have of God is obtained by reflect ing on my own soul , heighten ing its powers , and removing its imperfections . I have , therefore , though not an in active idea , yet in myself some sort of an active thinking im age of the Deity . And though I perceive Him not by sense , yet I have a notion of Him , or know Him by reflexion and reasoning .” — P. 93 . " The existence , therefore , of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect ; and these arguments are founded entirely on perience . . . It is only ex perience , wh…
1907 · PDF PAGE 88
…rison Scrawled backwards , as a bad magician must . By these vile tricks , abominable spells , I drew foul horrors from a many hells --- Though I had fathomed Fate ; though I had seen Chastity charm - proof arm and sea gray eyes And sweet clean body of my spirit's queen , Where nothing dwells that God did not devise .' The sonnets relating the events of the seventh to the tenth day are dismal , attempting to drown Love in Lust . On the twelfth a little flame burns up , then comes the poem , which Alice receives and reads . Every verse is as cha…
1907 · PDF PAGE 202
…phy finds its founder in the French philosopher Descartes ; for it was he who started to unravel the Penelope web of tangled philosophic thought , which had lain sleeping for a thousand years or more upon the sterile shelf of Christian impotence . His theories of “ Innate ideas ” raised the anger of Locke , the disciple of Aristotle and Bacon . Revolting from the cogito ergo sum of Descartes , he compared the mind to a tabula rasa , on which he in his turn wrote an equal absurdity in the words : nihil est in intellectu quod non antea fuerit in …
1907 · PDF PAGE 35
… . For we are many , and thy name is One .? Before we leave the glowing east , one more curious similarity still strikes us , it is that though in so many ways the ideas of Aleister Crowley are akin to those of Omar Khayyam , yet his fertile imagination also engenders flights as spiritual as those contained in the melodious ghazals of Jeláladdin . In more than one place we come across lines similar to these in Tannhäuser : I say , then , “ I; " and yet it is not “ I ” Distinct , but “ I ” incorporate in All . I am the Resurrection and the Life …
1907 · PDF PAGE 229
…y difficulty , or give me satisfaction in a matter of such importance . Can I do better than propose the difficulty to the public , even though , per haps ,I have small hopes of obtaining a solution ? We shall , at least , by these means , be sensible of our ignorance , if we do not augment our knowledge . “ I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardon able arrogance who concludes , because an argument has escaped his own investigation , that therefore it does not really exist .” ? And he continues further on : “ And though he should be conv…
1907 · PDF PAGE 211
… the Ain Soph , which in itself remained Zero . Turning now for a short time from the Mystic to the Idealistic philosophy , we find that though both are closely united , the former founds its system on man's wondering ignorance in trying to link subject and object esoterically , whilst the latter builds up reality in mind perceptions , treating nothing as illusion but the reality of the materialists . Berkeley , when he de clared in his transcendental philosophy that esse = percipi was only in reality reiterating the idea held ages pre viously …
1907 · PDF PAGE 209
202 THE STAR IN THE WEST 1 thought . Science will say that intelligence is last , and that matter slowly evolves into animal life ; in fact, that matter (A ) is first, and intelligence (B ) is second . The idealists and sankhyâs will put intelligence (B ) first , and the series will run B ,A , B ,A ,B ,A . Both , however , are indicating the same chain ; but Crowley, like the philosophers of the Vedanta , strides beyond both intellect and matter to find an “ I ” (purusha) or self, which is beyond all intellect , and of which in tellect is but t…
1907 · PDF PAGE 147
… toward that city which is God . We have already seen in “ The Mother's Tragedy " and “ The Fatal Force ,” that the love of the mother , though it could not cause the shadow to travel back wards one degree on the face of the dial , it at least clothed in a white garment of chastity, not only the amorous music -hall artiste , but even the incestuous queen of Egypt . And though “ Jezebel " did not love as they loved , her power of loving many exonerated her want of love for one or a few . She like the Circe of old who turned the followers of Ulys…
1907 · PDF PAGE 327
…e than that attained by the East . We will now show the chief means which were em ployed by the adepts of the West in gaining this end . Though , as it would be only natural to expect , the Christian Church strongly repudiated the idea of con nection between her Ceremonial practices and those And float up to the nothing , which is all things The ground of being , where self - forgetful silence , To emptiness , -emptiness fulness , -fulness God , Till we touch Him , and , like a snow - flake , melt Upon his light - sphere's keen circumference ! …
1907 · PDF PAGE 14
…omplex symbols Crowley has written with St. Leo :— “ Know , O man , thy dignity ; ” and this I have in this essay attempted to explain , though many I am afraid will misunderstand me , and more still misinterpret my modest efforts . For these latter ones I can but exclaim : “ Caeterum scis quid ego cogitem , scortum scorteum ; Di tibi dent , nudosque lares inopemque senectam et longas hyemes perpetuamque sitim ." And for those former , bid them contemplate well the words of St. Augustine : “ Such as the love of man is, such is he himself . Dost…
1907 · PDF PAGE 124
…” he strongly urges union between Great Britain and the United States . That friendship and dominion shall be wrought Out of the womb of thought , And all the bygone days be held as things of nought . Are we not weary of the fangéd pen ? Are we not friends , and men ? Let us look frankly face to face — and quarrel then !" Strongly advocating fraternity between the two great nations , he vehemently deprecates “ The hireling quillmen and the jingo crowd .” In a poem called “ A Valentine " in " Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic " —though a footnote…
1907 · PDF PAGE 271
…ore the terror suddenly shown. The nameless fear for self , far hurled By death to dissolution vile, Fades as the royal truth is known : Though change and sorrow range and roll , There is no self - there is no soul !? TIME AND SPACE One question still remains before we dismiss the question of Time and Space , and that is their homo geneity and accidental reality in the Ego . Being forms of extension , Space permits Size , and Time , Number , i.e., in Consciousness . This is the meaning of “ Time is the fourth Dimension .” So the hard thinking o…
1907 · PDF PAGE 250
…las . THE QABALAH Before entering upon Aleister Crowley's ontological essay on Space , it will be as well first to run through , briefly though it may be , some of the more important eclaircissements of the Qabalah , and the influence this divine theurgy has alike borne on his poetry and philosophy ; for his analysis of space is based on the ontological assertion of the absoluteness of the Qabalistic Zero . Worshippers of a personal God are by nature ultra materialistic . Their God is but a friend , a mighty man who will eventually pull them ou…
1907 · PDF PAGE 47
…, they do not . The “ y " in lady might by some be con sidered an admissible elision with the " and . ” But I myself should not pass it, though in the following I should : Many the spirits broken for one man ; Many the men that perish to create One God the more ; many the weary and wan5 In the last line of the succeeding verse the metre ( I should say) is not unimpeachable : 1 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p. 205. Ibid . vol . i, p. 209. : Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic , vol . i, p. 107. 4 Ibid . vol . i, p. 98. 5 The Temple of the…
1907 · PDF PAGE 282
…e nothing for truth with out the clear knowledge that it is such ." Thus Jove like he discrowned the authority of a thousand years , and though the symbolization of his ideas was often at variance with the logic of his facts , it is to him alone that present - day agnosticism must look back on as its founder . Berkeley , as we have seen , carried the Cartesian principle to its logical result ; Hume , 1 The Sword of Song , vol . ii, p . 163 , ? Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic , vol . i, p . 95 . 3 The Fatal Force , vol . i, p . 145 . Mysteries …
1907 · PDF PAGE 24
…uperabundance of his genius ; and secondly , the diversity of his form . “ My womb is pregnant with mad moons and suns,” he writes , and though we could hardly agree to endow so virile a master with so feminine an organ , yet we can attribute something very like it to his brain . Pregnant it certainly is , and more , being already the mother of a large family , a family as diverse as the offspring of Uranus , father of the Gods , born to him by Earth , earthy and celestial . Sweet lyrics are crushed cheek by jowl with the most corrosive satire …
1907 · PDF PAGE 272
…nnot me surpass , or I beneath him lie . Self is surpassed by self - annihilation ; The nearer nothing , so much more divine . Who is as though he were not - ne'er had been That man , oh joy ! is made God absolute .
1907 · PDF PAGE 301
…n the earlier works was a glittering net work of sparkling streams . In “ Time ” we find the commandments of Yama and Niyama mentioned , though we must never forget that the conditions of success vary for every indi vidual , and that Crowley might advise one pupil to drink more , and another to abstain . He doubts That extreme virtue is a necessary condition for one who is desirous of attaining this state of bliss.3 In the beginning of “ Pentecost " descriptions of Asana and Prânâ yama : In strange and painful attitude , I sat , while he was ve…
1907 · PDF PAGE 223
…wing to ourselves that we have first raised a dust , and then complained we cannot see ." 2 And naturally to expect , Berkeley himself , though an Adept of a very high order , starting up wards through the clear atmosphere of the sky , clutched the very fire from the altar of God , and then in his descent to the dusty plains of Earth , caused such a whirlwind to arise , that his immediate successors , and even we who live two hundred years after that 1 Eleusis , vol . iii, p . 225 . 2 P. 6.
1907 · PDF PAGE 280
THE NEW WINE 273 AGNOSTICISM Ex Oriente Lux . As old as the Vedas is the idea of Agnosticism , though in name it is not yet forty years of age . Everywhere we look we find the 'Ayvborq Oeq of Paul , midst the Greeks , the Egyptians , the Hebrews , the Chaldeans , the Aryans , and the Chinese , and its light is focussed in the greatest of the great : Socrates and Plato , Malebranche and Descartes , Locke and Spinoza , Hume and Berkeley , Swedenborg and Kant , Hegel and Comte , Tyndall , Spencer , and Huxley . Declining the mimetic , seeking the …