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Page 113 of 1151929 · PDF PAGE 366
…re positive. Physical facts betray their hallucinatory nature by their consistent refusal to comply with the requirements of reason, and thought admits its transparent falsity by violating its own laws at every turn. Materialists claim that the senses are the sole source of knowledge. Good! Then the most absurd and impossible idea of a madman or a metaphysician must be derived from sensory impressions no less than a brick. We habitually use our mental faculties to criticize and correct our sensory impressions. At what point, then, does our judg…
1929 · PDF PAGE 48
…ocks till it caught somewhere, and then swarm up the rope. He gave himself the air of being a rock climber of the first rank and I never thought of doubting it. Now I had made the first solitary descent of the Ennerdale face of the Pillar Rock, a feat at that time considered theoretically impossible. He asked me casually whether it was the sort of place that he could take his daughter. I did a sort of rule of three sum in my head. If poor little I, the beginner, could do it, a fortiori so could the great man, even with the handicap of the girl …
1929 · PDF PAGE 553
…ho cannot be taught the elements of common sense by any means soever. Not long afterwards some trivial incident touched the same spot. I thought he would be the better for a holiday from the abbey. He was working so hard that his health began to make me anxious. He interpreted {872} my suggestion as a banishment and instead of going, as I proposed, to Palermo, and putting in a month working up the interest of the people there about us, he went off to the top of the Rock without any provisions of any kind. He had taken an oath not to come down b…
1929 · PDF PAGE 118
…ppeared that the manager of a mine near St. Luis Potosi had stolen a quantity of gold dust. He had got scared and dared not bolt. Wilson thought that if we offered him a thousand dollars, each putting up half, he would be willing to hand over the compromising sacks, value five thousand or so. Not for nothing had I read the works of "Pitcher of The Pink 'Un", and other authorities on the gentle art of parting a fool and his money. I joyfully accepted Wilson's proposal. "Bring your five hundred right along," I said, "and I'll go and put {208} the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 557
… One would imagine that it would have been safe to bet on his doing some damage. But no! His pistol was spiritually his twin. The bullet thought that it might hurt itself if it happened to hit a bone, so it skipped nimbly round his ribs and sought repose from the tribulations of existence in a comfortable cushion. I soon discovered the root of his rottenness. After all, there must be a star somewhere there behind that bank of trembling fob. I worked with a will to save him. And one of the most pathetic incidents in my memory is that he came to …
1929 · PDF PAGE 369
… all intents and purposes, the whole time the divorce was pending. Apart from short trips to Paris, I was in England till autumn, when I thought it best to keep well out of the way during the actual time of the trial. I took Neuburg to be my chela and we left London on November 10th. In the meanwhile I was doing comparatively little personal magical work and my lyrics were all of lesser importance. The fact of the matter was that I had got to the end of my tether. The gods had put their foot down --- thus far and no farther! I felt myself my li…
1929 · PDF PAGE 137
…ess. I did not solve this completely until my attainment of the Grade of Mater of the Temple in 1909, when at last I realized that every thought, word and act might be pressed into the service of the soul: more, that it must be if the soul were ever to be free. I "mixed up the planes" for many years to some extent, though never as badly as most mystics do. During this retirement I was fortunate in being under the constant vigilant supervision of Allan Bennett, whose experience enabled him to detect the firs onset of disturbing ideas. For instan…
1904 · PDF PAGE 66
…rotest against the charge brought by Mr. Chesterton against the English- men “who write philosophical essays on the splendour of Eastern thought.” If he confines his strictures to the translators of that well-known Eastern work the “Old Testament” I am w ith him ; any modern Biblical critic w ill tell him w hat I mean. It took a long time, too, for the missionaries (and Tommy Atkins) to discover that “Budd” was not a “great Gawd.” But then they did not want to, and in any case sympath and in- telligence are not precisely the most salient qualit…
1929 · PDF PAGE 170
…d that the average daily "local irregularity" approximates to double that amount. It is sometimes infuriating. One day, at the end (as I thought) of a long march, I caught sight of the goal not half a mile away, both it and I being close to the river. But a rocky buttress {291} gratuitously juts into the stream and the track makes a little detour of some three thousand feet in height to pass it. Apart from the mere fatigue of these marches, they are made detestable by the utter monotony and ugliness of the landscape. The mountains are huge hide…
1929 · PDF PAGE 561
…tter for nearly an hour. One of his myrmidons after another stood at my side to be scrutinized for comparative height and width. One man thought my nose good enough to arrest me; another urged that my mouth cleared me of the crime. But the chief of police was tenacious. He had in his mind his step and the Legion of Honour and the "Daily Mail's" twenty-five thosand francs. Almost in despair I pulled out Guillamod's account of the 1902 expedition and showed him my photograph with my name printed under it. "Do you really wish", I said, "to maintai…
1929 · PDF PAGE 583
…one of the most brilliant students in the university. He became interested in the mathematical theorems of The Book of the Law, which he thought, no less than myself and O. P. V., capable of revolutionizing mathematical ideas and marking a new epoch in that science. We agreed that to demonstrate this would prove that the author of "The Book of the Law" was an intelligence beyond any hitherto known. He therefore decided to write a thesis on this subject for a fellowship of his college. Early in August, I returned to the city for a little Magical…
1929 · PDF PAGE 61
…a riddle. "Why is Gladstone's hair like a tuft of grass?" "Because it grows on the top of an old sod." That was the quality of political thought which was considered on the same level of certainty as two and two make four. I recall two lines of a poem that I wrote to Lord Rosebery:
1929 · PDF PAGE 302
…im to ride on horseback; but naturally he had to be content with a somewhat sorry screw, wile my own pony was a fairly decent animal. He thought the time ripe to attempt to force me to "lose face": that is, to become an object of ridicule to the coolies. If he had succeeded, I need hardly point out, there would have been and end of all discipline and we should probably have been robbed and murdered in short order. His idea was to start out ahead of us on my pony. I did not find out what had happened for some time. When I did, I set out on foot …
1929 · PDF PAGE 309
…here we find no green Alps, no clustering cottages; but their stupendous sublimity takes the mind away from any expectation or desire of thoughts connected with humanity. The Rockies have no majesty; they do not elevate the mind to contemplation of Almighty God any more than they warm the heart by seeming sentinels to watch over the habitations of one's fellow men. Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime both against the aspirations o the soul and the affections of the heart. I had been fed vilely…
1929 · PDF PAGE 304
…urney was bitterly cold. The wind, shifting from south-east to south-west, literally took the skin off our faces, even mine, which I had thought inured to all the possible devilishness of nature. Later, this wind dropped and was replaced by a much more deadly device; a steady draught from the north was infernally icy as when it started its career in the ghastly deserts of Siberia. It had the same quality as the north wind which we had on Chogo Ri; it took no notice whatever of poshtin (coats lined with sheepskin), sweaters, flannel shirts and v…
1929 · PDF PAGE 146
…lf exclusively to spiritual progress. I wrote to this effect; but when I told Allan that I had done so, I found, to my surprise, that he thought I ought to go for Eckenstein's sake. It was the same problem as that about Abra-Melin and the Order. And I chose ion the same way. I wired Eckenstein that I would go. One of the results of this was that I began to grow a beard. Eckenstein had put me up to a lot of the points of conduct that should be observed in travelling among Mohammedans and I practised these conscientiously. For instance, I taught …
1929 · PDF PAGE 552
…id what I could, but before I found him work, he had got the Lafayette to {871} 1. WEH note: This is C. F. Russel try him as a waiter. I thought he might be of use to my "son" in Detroit and wrote asking him to find an opening. He did so and Godwin went off. In all he said and did, one peculiarity obtruded itself --- this violent reaction against any act of authority as such, however reasonable, however much to his own advantage. When he noticed the suggestion of discipline, he became blind with rage. His mental faculties were simply snowed und…
1929 · PDF PAGE 573
…to mouth, with disaster eternally looming ahead, and the whisper of hope more faint and feeble as each effort ended in failure. Again, I thought I saw the design of the gods. This was the man I had needed for the last ten years, a man with every gift that a Magus might need, and already prepared for initiation by practically complete knowledge, not only of the elements but of the essence of Magick. I wasted no time. I urged him to join me and work with me until his initiation was complete. My proposal not only fulfilled the holiest hope of his …
1929 · PDF PAGE 581
… answer told me at a glance that he expected a fatal issue. I wrote out a telegram informing his parents so that they might come if they thought fit. Betty offered to take it to the office, but instead of returning, collapsed hysterically in the street before sending it off. It was a common trick of hers to excite sympathy, attract notice or annoy her husband if he happened to say or do anything which she disliked. In her absence, Raoul developed paralysis of the heart and died at once without fear or pain. It was as if a man, tired of staying …
1905 · PDF PAGE 232
…hat he so readily pursues, reminds me of my own delusions. But, these follies and delusions being the common property of mankind, I have thought them of sufficient interest, dramatic and_philo- sophical, to form the basis of a poem. Let no man dare to reproach me with posing as the hero of my tale. I fall back on the last utterance of Tannhduser himself: ‘‘I say, then, ‘I’: and yet it is not ‘I’ Distinct, but ‘I’ incorporate in All.” Above all, pray understand that I do not pose as a teacher. I am but an asker of questions, such as may be found…