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Page 1 of 61954 · PDF PAGE 220
…e the saint, so as to avoid the necessity of intervening Himself." Lazy old parishioner! Now for a douche of common sense. Hatha-Yoga is quite clear and simple, even logical, about it. The method is plain Pranayama. Didn't I tell you one time of the Four Stages of Success? Perspiration-of a very special kind. Sukshma-Khumbakam: automatic rigidity . One stiffens like a dog in a bell-jar when you pump in Carbon Dioxide (is it?) The Bhuchari-Siddhi, "jumping about like a frog." One is wafted, without one's Asana being disturbed, about the floor, r…
1954 · PDF PAGE 305
… habit of observation may have brought dreams to the surface which would otherwise have gone unremarked. In either case the figures were quite definite. I found almost at once, that is to say after about a month, that practically every dream that I could remember, could be quite clearly ascribed to one of two causes: (a) the events of the previous day or days, or the subjects which had interested and excited me during that period, and (b) the physical conditions of the moment. For instance, a good deal of the time of the experiment, I was sleep…
1954 · PDF PAGE 405
…n or other you fail to co-ordinate all these various factors in the problem; and sooner or later the moment comes when it appears to you quite natural to succeed in getting out of the body, or in opening the eyes on the astral plane, or in getting hold of the particular form of elemental energy which has until that moment escaped you. I ought incidentally to mention that this sudden illumination-that is not quite the right word but I cannot think of a better one-is quite different to the sudden confidence which takes hold of one in the Yoga pra…
1954 · PDF PAGE 222
… resting on his head and right shoulder, exactly like an image overturned. I set him right way up, and he came out of his trance. He was quite unconscious that anything unusual had happened. But he had evidently been thrown there by the mysterious forces generated by Pranayama. There is no doubt whatever about this phenomenon; it is quite common. But the Yogis claim that the lateral motion is due to lack of balance, and that if one were in perfect spiritual equilibrium one would rise directly in the air. I have never seen any case of levitation…
1954 · PDF PAGE 57
…in such a case one may expect to have to reinforce it by a certain amount of historical, literary, or philosophic study-and research. 4. Quite right, dear lady, about your incarnation memories acting as a "Guide to the Way Back." Of course, if you "missed an Egyptian Incarnation," you would not be so likely to be a little Martha, worried "about much serving." Don't get surfeited with knowledge, above all things; it is so very fascinating , so dreadfully easy; and the danger of becoming a pedant-"Deuce take all your pedants! say I." Don't "dry-r…
1954 · PDF PAGE 298
…ing Captain Coincidence as 'Friend', whereas he is naturally the most formidable of all your foes when it comes to a question of proof." Quite right , Sergeant-Major! But it is not only about prophecy, but about all sorts of things, in particular, of course, the identification of angels and similar problems. Well, we have captured quite a few lads of the company of Captain Coincidence; let us have them up for examination and learn what we can about their weapons and other warlike matters! I take our first prisoner from Magick. The most famous n…
1954 · PDF PAGE 289
…and ends which may be perfectly irrelevant, and insisting that they conceal forecasts. This excludes Great Pyramid lunatics; it would be quite simple to do the same sham calculations with the Empire State Building; when the architects protested, it is simple to reply : why, but of course! God was most careful not to let them know what they were really doing, or they would have died of fright! This argument was actually put forward by the Spiritists when Zancig confessed that his music-hall exploits· were accomplished by means of a code. It is q…
1954 · PDF PAGE 389
…s enough for the caveat part of it; now I plunge direct into the autobiographical. I begin with my childhood. There is one incident, not quite relevant in this place, but yet of such supreme significance that I dare not omit it. I must have been about 6 years old. I was capering round 'my father during a walk through the meadows. He pointed out a bunch of nettles in the corner of the field, close to the gate (I can see it quite clearly to-day!) and told me that if I touched them they would sting. Some word , gesture, or expression of mine 356
1954 · PDF PAGE 374
…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 be the dissociation of sexual from reproductive life. The word "mother" must be as nauseating to al…
1954 · PDF PAGE 204
…ow there is no ill feeling! When you have almost decided that you had better make up your mind to do without something that seems really quite unobtainable - say, a sixty-carat diamond which would look so well on the head-dress-a perfect stranger comes along and makes you a present of one. Or, a long series of quite unreasonable obstacles or silly accidents interfere with your plans: or, the worst difficulty in your way is incomprehensibly removed by some extraordinary "freak of chance." Or . .. In a word, you seem to have strolled into a world…
1954 · PDF PAGE 504
…if we have to wait for the calamity, and for evolution to begin all over again in a number of centuries-with luck!-one thing is at least quite certain: we can do nothing about it. Any form of activity must be as futile and as fatuous as any other; and the only sensible philosophy must be "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Is there a conceivable alternative? Well, consider the cause of the impending collapse. It is quite simple: Knowledge is loose, without control of Will and of In t elligence. (How clearly the Qabalah states and demon…
1954 · PDF PAGE 126
…ons enables one to perform all the classical 'miracles'.) These powers are stupendous. These powers move in dimensions of time and space quite other than those with which we are familiar. Their values are incomprehensible to us. To a Secret Chief, wielding this weapon, "The nice conduct of a clouded cane" might be infinitely more important than a war, famine and pestilence such as might exterminate a third part of the race, to promote whose welfare is the crux of His oath, and the sole reason of His existence! But who are They? Since They are "…
1954 · PDF PAGE 93
60 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS The squares are quite separate. The whole world outside the square D is the world of no dogs: outside the square S, the world of no-study. But suppose now that I want to make the Zero absolute, like our 0° , I must say "No dogs are not in my study." Or, "There is no absence-of-dog in my study." Tha t is the same as saying: "Some dogs are in my study"; diagram again: In Diagram I, "the world where no dogs are" included the whole of my study; in Diagram 2 that absence-of-dog is no longer there; so one or more of them must …
1954 · PDF PAGE 454
MORALITY (1) 421 to carry out his very first duty to the State, the production of an heir. Quite contrary to this is the career of the "Holy Man." Accustomed to the severest physical toil, inured to all the rigours of climate, aloof from every noxious excess, he becomes a very champion of virility. More, he has been particularly trained for this form of asceticism by all sorts of secret methods and practices; some of these, by the way, I was able to learn myself, and found surprisingly efficacious. So we have the law of supply and demand at wor…
1954 · PDF PAGE 106
THREE SCHOOLS OF MAGICK (2) 73 even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different from what etymology, tradition, and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.) Weste…
1954 · PDF PAGE 330
…out long ago, the Law of Karma is the Law of Inertia. Nor is it necessary to assert that it always works out in this way; "sometimes" is quite good enough. Besides, to say "sometimes" explains (or rather, avoids) most of the evident objections to the theory . I grant you cheerfully that Reincarnation is a comparatively rare occurrence; and it throws upon the objector the onus of proving an A or an E proposition. What is it that reincarnates? We have had this before , in another connection; it is the Supernal Triad of lechidah, Chiah, and Nescha…
1954 · PDF PAGE 370
…be considered, what about the Masters? Do they ride us on the snaffle? Tradition says not so." This depends wholly on you . If you are a quite ordinary Aspirant, and a few dozen incarnations one way or the other don't make such a difference, then They presumably won't bother about you at all. In the course of centuries, Karma will roll out the creases. But-suppose you are of those specially chosen to execute some necessary operation in the course of Their plans? Quite another pair of boots to tread that Path. Don't imagine that
1954 · PDF PAGE 48
…I am Mercury." I put it into Latin-Mercurius sum, and suddenly something struck me, a sort of nameless reaction, which said: "That's not quite right." Like a flash it came to me to put it into Greek, which gave me Hermes Eimi, and adding that up rapidly, I got the number 418, with all the marvellous correspondences which had been so abundantly useful to me in the past. (See Equinox of the Gods, p. 138.) My troubles disappeared like a flash of lightning. Now to answer your questions ad seriatim; it is quite all right to put questions to me about…
1954 · PDF PAGE 419
…d quiet after the nuisance of "getting up." I feel as if I were being pushed about in a crowd of swarming insect-citizens. Then there is quite another kind, which is quite clearly penny-plain frustration. Something one wants to do, perhaps a trifle, and one can't. Then one looks for the obstacle, and then the enemy behind that again; maybe one gets into one of those "ladder-meditations" (as described in Liber Aleph, quoted in The Book of Thoth, when discussing "the Fool" and Hashish, only the wrong way up!) which end by the conception of the Un…
1954 · PDF PAGE 198
… already with that friend which I was so lax as to allow you; and it is, I own, very helpful to discuss strange faces if only to make it quite clear to your own mind why you decide on one as Virgo, another as Taurus. A strange thing happened once; I had explained all this to the girl that I happened to be living with: that is, I taught her the names of the signs; she knew no Astrology, not even the simple correspondences. After about a month, she was better at it than I was! ("Why strange?" you mutter rudely. "Quite right, my dear! I have alway…