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Page 1 of 81954 · PDF PAGE 72
…rld; more, that you grasped the fact that this apparently recondite and irrelevant information has an immediate bearing on your personal life of to-day. Still, I was not surprised that you should add: "But why should I make a special study of, and devote my time and energy to acquiring proficiency in, the Science and Art of Magick?" Ah, well then, perhaps you have not understood my remarks at one of our earliest interviews as perfectly as you suppose! For the crucial point of my exposition was that Magick is not a matter extraneous to the main …
1954 · PDF PAGE 520
80 Life A Gamble Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. In one or two-no, I think more like three or four-letters of yours to hand in the last couple of months , you have put forward various excuses for slackness, the necessities of your economic situation . You say you must have "regular work," and a "steady income ," and all that sort of thing. My innocent child, that species of Magick is quite simple. Take the horns of a hare ... That's enough for the present: I'll tell you what to do with them when you've got them. In …
1954 · PDF PAGE 173
… You must observe. That implies, first of all, that you must learn to observe. And you must record your observations. No circumstance of life is, or can be irrelevant. "He that is not with me is against me." In all these letters you will find only two things: either I tell you what is bad for you, or what is good for you. But I am not you; I don't know every detail of your life, every trick of your thought. You must do ninety percent of the work for yourself. Whether it is love, or your daily avocation, or diet, or friends, or amusements, or an…
1954 · PDF PAGE 156
… in dramatic form. What is the Path? l. The Ego is attracted to the Solar System. 2. The Child experiences Birth. 3. The Man experiences Life. 4. He experiences Death . 5. He experiences the World beyond Death. 6. This entire cycle of Point-Events is withdrawn into Annihilation . In the O.T.O. these successive stages are represented as follows : l. 0° 2. 1° 3. W 4. IW 5. IV 6. P.1. (Minerval) (Initiation) (Consecration) (Devotion) (Perfection, or Exaltation) (Perfect Initiate) Of these Events or Stations upon the Path all but three (11°) are si…
1954 · PDF PAGE 370
…tand this planet and this social status "to which it has pleased God to call me." The Brethren of the Rose and Cross deprecated monastic life or hermit life: perhaps they thought such expedients cowardly, or at least as a confession of weakness. I agree. One ought to be able to live the normal life of a member of one's class, to all external seeming; at least sufficiently so as not to appear unduly eccentric. Perhaps "Let my servants be few and secret!" bears some such implication. But the condition of allowing such apparent laxity is this: Tha…
1954 · PDF PAGE 540
E '" ili '" Z f I I " a: l ... >I l " • I If , The Tree of life Appendix I The Constitution of Man R () ;T ai' ;T Abvss , () R f\ " T 1 If £ ... 0 " L 0
1954 · PDF PAGE 147
…hath led thee! Thou didst ask for fame, power and pleasure, health and wealth and love, and strength and length of days. Thou didst hold life with eight tentacles, like an octopus. Thou didst seek the four powers and the seven delights and the twelve emancipations, and the two and twenty Privileges, and the nine and forty Manifestations, and lo! thou art become as one of These. Bowed are their backs, whereon resteth the Universe. Veiled are their faces, that have beheld the glory Ineffable. These adepts seem like Pyramids-their hoods and robes …
1954 · PDF PAGE 369
…one with any bunch of legends. But such devices leave us without Accepted Authority, and without that nobody is going to gamble away his life. Thus the Path for men of spiritual integrity begins with absolute scepticism. Our methods must be exclusively inductive. "Gamble away his life," did I say? Indeed I did. If there is any truth at all in anything, or even any meaning in life, in Nature herself; then there is one thing, one thing only paramount; to find out who one is, what is one's necessary Way. The alternative to the Great Work is the ho…
1954 · PDF PAGE 89
…py conjunction of circumstances, to remain long in the mind with any clear-cut vision) it is hardly ever mistaken for an event of actual life. Good: then, as waking life is to dream, so-yes, more sol-is Religious Experience as above described to that life common to all of us. It is not merely easy, it is natural, not merely natural, but inevitable, for anyone who has 3. I have discussed this and the following points very fully in Book 4, Part I, pp. 63-89.
1954 · PDF PAGE 521
…rt. Where's that Book of Lies? Ah, here we are. "It is chance, and chance only, that rules the Universe; therefore , and therefore only, life is good." Then, is it mere fatuity and folly to make plans? Was not the IXth Atu, the Hermit, also at one time called "Prudence"? Of course . Abstract philosophy rarely coincides with common-sense. We should plan as carefully as we can; but we should always allow a margin for every conceivable accident . Nor should we trust to luck, like England, when she goes to war. Bret Harte has an admirable story "Th…
1954 · PDF PAGE 210
…e under will. Yours fraternally, 666 P.S. "Next letter," yes, they are running into one another more than somewhat; it is better so, for Life is like that. And we have the bold bad editor to sort them out.
1954 · PDF PAGE 62
… any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the conditions. (Illustration: The most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one's own True Will, or of the means by which to fulfil that Will. A man may fancy himself a painter, and waste his life trying to become one; or he may be really a painter, and yet fail to understand and to measure the difficulties peculiar to that career.) 5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces. (Illustration: A …
1954 · PDF PAGE 522
LIFE A GAMBLE 489 So off we go. Risks, we have agreed, are always unavoidable; but we can calculate them. The best and wisest man I ever knew, the late Oscar Eckenstein , was once offered a job which gave him a fifty percent chance of survival. He calmly sat down, worked out his "expectation of life," his "expectation of income," and the Lord alone knows what other factors. It came out that the pay offered was a thousand pounds or so less than he might expect normally, so he turned down the offer. Not a trace of sentiment of any kind! Now let u…
1954 · PDF PAGE 205
…lessed comfort that they happen, that chance, coincidence, and all the rest will simply not explain it all away, that your new vision of life is not a dream, but part and parcel of Experience for evermore, as real as any other manifestation of Reality through sense such as is common to all men. And this brings us-it has been a long way round-from the suggestion of your visit to the question (hitherto unanswered) in your letter. You raise so vast and razor-edged a question when you write of the supposed antinomy of "soul" and "sense" that it see…
1954 · PDF PAGE 52
…tuals to 111° as soon as you are fairly familiar with them. The plan of the grades is this: 0° Attraction to the Solar System 1° Birth W Life IIIo Death IVo "Exaltation" P.1. "Annihilation" yo -IXo Progressive comment on 11° with very special reference to the central secret of practical Magick. There is thus no connection with the A :. A:. system and the Tree of Life. Of course, there are certain analogies. Your suggested method of study: you have got my idea quite well. But nobody can "take you through" the Grades of A:. A : . . The Grades con…
1954 · PDF PAGE 523
…GICK WITHOUT TEARS particularly serious or as serious as anything can be. But what I have said above amounts really to a regular Rule of Life. Need I add that the prime and essential requisite in all this Work is that you so devote yourself to, and identify yourself with, the Gods, that there is never any doubt in your mind as to what They intend you to do? Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666
1954 · PDF PAGE 316
…C. or the Apparent Frivolity of Some of My Remarks Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Far-off indeed those sunny days when life in England was worth living; when one could travel anywhere in Europe-except Russia and Turkey, which spiritually, at least, are in Asia-or America, without a passport; when we complained that closing time was twelve-thirty a.m.; when there was little or no class bitterness, the future seemed secure, and only Nonconformists failed to enjoy the fun that bubbled up on every side. Well, in those days there w…
1954 · PDF PAGE 283
250 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death. I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. "Come unto me" is a foolish word: for it is I that go. Who worshipped Heru-pa-kraath have worshipped me; ill, for I am the worshipper. (6-8) For I am perfect, being Not ; and my number is nine by the fools; but with the just I am eight, and one in eight: Which is vital, for I am none indeed. The Empress and the K…
1954 · PDF PAGE 374
…te are apt to pour forth floods of filth which would disgust the coarsest harridans of slum-land! This is the final fact: so long as our life is bound to that of the animal and vegetable worlds, so that we are bondslaves born to their quite ineradicable habits, so long are we dragged back from every flight of fancy or imagination such as would break the chains that anchor us to mud. The most far-seeing of our prophetically minded writers, Aldous Huxley, brands this black fact upon our foreheads. The first condition of a "Brave New World" must b…
1954 · PDF PAGE 469
436 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS only of Knowledge but of Life? For there is that in Man which is God, and there is that also which is Dust; and by our Magick we shall make these twain one Flesh, to the Obtaining of the Empery of the Universe. I suppose I might have put it more concisely: Classics is itself Initiation, being the key of the Unconscious; Mathematics is the Art of manipulating the Ruach, and of raising it to Neschamah; and Science is co-terminous with Magick. These are the three branches of study which I regard as fundamental. No others a…