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Page 101 of 1071929 · PDF PAGE 406
… Oscar Wilde monument was fated to furnish further amusement. With unparalleled insolence, the authorities decided to mutilate Epstein's work. They employed a sculptor, who must, by the way, have been utterly lost to all sense of shame, to fix a bronze butterfly over the "objectionable" feature of the monument. This feature had been quite unnoticeable to any but the most prurient observer. The butterfly, being of different material and workmanship, clamoured for attention to exactly that which it was intended to make people forget. This inciden…
1929 · PDF PAGE 433
…ew; but (for various reasons) sent it in as from another hand. I got a friend of mine to enclose it with a letter to say that it was the work of her daughter at Cambridge. (The story ends, by the way, with the widow, unable to endure the horror of knowing what was in store for her and the rest of humanity, urging everybody to blow
1929 · PDF PAGE 135
…third person, I.A. no longer remembered, but D.D.C.F. never pulled the trigger. Mathers thus disposed of, to business! What of the Great Work? Did it become absurd with Mathers? No more than Everest ceases to attract when the Alpine Club caps incompetence with manslaughter! We simply dismissed from our minds the whole question of the G.'. D.'. and restated the problem on first principles. In this situation, I had the advantage of wider reading and more varied experience than Allan; he, that of more intensive training, and especially of his rece…
1944 · PDF PAGE 50
…is linked with that of the mystery of paternity, and also of the iridescence of the alchemical mercury in one of the stages of the Great Work.
1904 · PDF PAGE 123
…rpasses that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of this planet.”—A. C. 2 A Note showing the necessity and scope of the Work in question.
1929 · PDF PAGE 96
…d by this standard we find that there is no particular reason for quarrelling with the conventional nomenclature. At this time I had not worked out any such apology for the theories of transcendentalism. I took everything as it came and submitted it to the test of experience. As it happened, I had no reason at any time to doubt the reality of the magical universe. I began my practical work with astral visions and found to my surprise that after half a dozen experiments I was better than my teacher. In these days I took my Magick very much au pi…
1907 · PDF PAGE 230
…eter in dim groves: there is silence; there is no organisation of ritual; there the worship is spontaneous and individual. In short, the work of religion is thrown upon the religious faculty, instead of being dele- gated to the quite inferior and irrelevant faculties of mere decorum or even stage- craft. A Christian of the type of Brown- ing understands this perfectly, True, he approves the sincerity which he finds to pervade the otherwise disgusting chapel; but he cares nothing whatever for the ‘Sraree-show of Peter’s successor,” and though I …
1929 · PDF PAGE 532
…, "... Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. ..." I accordingly broke up my camp after a few days' holiday from magical work, and returned to New York. The next period is strangely confused. It was as if I were left in the Desert with no idea of direction and surrounded by a series of mirages. Innumerable people came into my life and passed out again, without leaving any trace. {840} 1. I find that I wrote it down plainly seventeen years ago! But I had no conception of its terror --- one must be a Magus to get that! The fact wa…
1929 · PDF PAGE 367
…chamah are guaranteed by interior certainty, and then cannot be criticized for the simple reason that they have themselves completed the work of criticism of the most destructive kind before presenting themselves at all. Buddhist psychology has analysed many of these characteristics of super-consciousness and even arranged them in an order corresponding with spiritual development. I may say that I have toiled for many years to express ideas of this order in terms intelligible to the normal consciousness and susceptible of apprehension by the no…
1929 · PDF PAGE 523
… Chokmah days counting from November 3rd, 1914 to June 9th, 1917. I was able to recognize my guide. During the past days I had done much work in analysing and interpreting the mysterious events which had characterized my sojourn in America. From this time on my progress was far less unintelligible than had hitherto been the case. I was therefore not surprised when an officer appeared at about the expected date, and her physical appearance told me at once where I had got to in my journey; for the god whose place is on the Threshold of the Temple…
1929 · PDF PAGE 353
…and shameless. The Memoirs of a Physician, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Blossom an the Fruit, and numerous other more or less occult works of fiction had supplied the plot, and many of them the incidents. The Kabbalah Unveiled1 The Life of Paracelsus, The Ritual and Dogma of Transcendental Magic and others had been transcribed, whole pages at a time, with such slight changes as "failed" for "resulted in failure", and occasional additions or omissions. I like Maugham well enough personally, though many people resent a curious trick which he …
1906 · PDF PAGE 261
…come, however unworthy, to take up the sword that Huxley wielded; I tell you that the Oppressor of Science in her girlhood is already at work to ravish her virginity; that a moment’s hesitation, idle- ness, security may force us back from the positions so hardly won. Are we never to go forward, moreover? Are our children still to be taught as facts the stupid and indecent fables of the Old Testament, fables that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself would indignantly repudiate? Are minds.to be warped early, the scientific method and imagination …
1907 · PDF PAGE 133
…to stalk my footsteps, and (4) I am literally not the man who wrote it, and, despise him as I may, I have no right to interfere with his work. But I will not be haunted by the ghost of a Banquo that another man has failed to lay; and this kind of ghost knows but one exorcism, One should bury him decently in fine fat type, and erect nice boards over him, and collect the criticisms of an enlightened press, and inscribe them on the tomb. Then he is buried beyond resurrection; oblivion takes him, and he will never haunt the author or anybody else a…
1906 · PDF PAGE 286
… ‘you have done too much, and must absolutely rest for four-and-twenty hours, However fresh you feel, however keen you are to pursue the work, rest you must, or you will but damage the apparatus you are endeavouring to perfect. Rest for longer if you like, never for less.” This adjuration recurs with great force to my mind at the present moment. Our Western *‘ Adepts ”— if you were a Western I would ask you to forgive the word—know, as the great brain specialist knows, the dangers of the practice ; the dangers of the training, the dangers of su…
1929 · PDF PAGE 66
…terial gratifications. Sir J. G. Frazer has pointed out this distinction in The Golden Bough. Magic he defines as science which does not work. It would be fairer to state this proposition in slightly different terms: magic is science in posse. The compiler of The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts is not only the most ponderously platitudinous and priggishly prosaic of pretentiously pompous pork butchers of the language, but the most voluminously voluble. I cannot dig over the dreary deserts of his drivel in search of the passage which made me wr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 376
…y of achieving the most colossal results in conditions which had hitherto been considered an absolute bar to carrying on even elementary work. It proves my proposition that the efficacy of traditional practices is independent of dogmatic and ethical considerations; and, moreover, that my sceptical formulae based on a purely agnostic viewpoint, and on the facts of physiology and psychology, as understood by modern materialists, were entirely efficacious. In summary, let me add that The Equinox was the first serious attempt to put before the publ…
1929 · PDF PAGE 435
…h found her in a miserable room on 176th Street or thereabouts. Pitifully poor, she had not been able to buy Liber 777 and had therefore worked week after week copying in the Astor Library. She impressed Laylah as an ernest seeker and a practical business woman. She professed the utmost devotion to me and proposed to come to England and put the work of the Order on a sound basis. I thought the idea was excellent, paid her passage to England and established her as a manageress. Technically, I digress; but I cannot refrain from telling her favour…
1929 · PDF PAGE 336
…t the best was limited by the narrowness of their ambitions. I at least was aiming at the highest.) Yet hardly anyone had read any of my work and the intrigues of my enemies had made it impossible for me to make myself heard. I never cease to wonder at the persistence of malignant hostility on the part of people who have never met me or read a line of my writing. I cannot see why people should pursue me with secret slander, often of a kind which carries its own refutation with it. To give one instance: It was said it was my practice to lure men…
1904 · PDF PAGE 55
… SONG 48 Putney) in their newly-demonstated capacity as “unnatural” sons, daughters, fathers, and so on. But I leave it. I am content—my work will have been well done—if this trifling essay be accepted as a just instalment towards a saner criticism of our holiest writers, a j uster appre- ciation of the glories of our greatest poet, a possibly jejune yet assuredly historic attempt to place of the first time William Shakespeare on his proper pedastal as an early disciple of Mr. George Bernard Shaw ; and by conse- quence to carve myself a little …
1944 · PDF PAGE 134
…r of all Love. For that silver wedge is like a lotus flower, and the Eye within the Ateph Crown crieth: I watch. And the Shaft crieth: I work. And the Barb crieth: I wait. And the voice of the Aethyr echoeth: It beams. It burns. It blooms. And now there cometh a strange thought; this Arrow is the source of all motion; it is infinite motion, yet it moveth not, so that there is ‘no motion. And therefore there is no matter. This Arrow is the glance of the Eye of Shiva. But because it moveth not, the universe is not de‐ stroyed. The universe is put…