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Page 115 of 1211929 · PDF PAGE 33
…ed, had been the skies, the streams, the mountains and the seas. For the first time in my life I was brought into contact with my fellow men and women. For the first time honest friendship, wholesome love, frank, gay and courageous, became possible and actual. I had loved nature as a refuge from mankind. I now perceived the beauty of the world in conjunction with the beauty of my species. For the first time {75} the sea sparkled, the breezes whispered other songs than those in praise of solitude, the flowers lent their fragrance and their folly…
1929 · PDF PAGE 476
…era and the wily old robber baron in his ancestry. But are any tears salt enough to weep for England when I think that none of my countrymen could read my bitterness and anger between the lines of that comic travesty of blasphemy? I must explain here that I had more than one string to my bow. It was really a minor part of my programme to wreck the German propaganda on the proof of reductio ad absurdum. I had hoped to gain the full confidence of the conspirators whom I had identified and deal with them as somebody whose name I forget dealt with …
1929 · PDF PAGE 468
…tions it involved, I set my teeth and stuck to the job. Now then, as to the form of my report. From time to time I sketched various statements intended for various readers. I have chosen the one which I wrote in a moment of heartbreak, when, after my work had been crowned with success, I found that my two oldest friends understood me so little that they thought it their duty to urge me to justify my conduct to the world by bringing an action against the most scurrilous blackmailing weekly in London. I was the angrier because at the moment I was…
1929 · PDF PAGE 469
…tmakers, West Strand, London, W.C., who are the best yet, and may be a pound or two on the wrong side of the ledger, which this advertisement should square, our degenerate, I mean I, went to Bern and asked the British Minister how to get home. The B. M. (which does not mean Blasted Mutt) did not know; he said it was impossible --- there might be a train in six weeks. Would Mr. Crowley write his name in a book to reserve a seat in that phantasmagoric train? Mr Crowley wrote it; the B. M. might be hard up one day and get a meal --- or an annuity …
1944 · PDF PAGE 127
…is no seriousness with it, or solemnity. It seems that the hand is spinning the wheel merely for pleasure‐it would be better to say amusement. “A voice comes: For he is a jocund and ruddy god, and his laughter is the vibration of all that exists, and the earthquakes of the soul. “One is conscious of the whirring of the wheel thrilling one, like an electric discharge passing through one. “Now I see the figures on the wheel, which have been interpreted as the sworded Sphinx, Hermanubis and Typhon. And that is wrong. The rim of the wheel is a vivi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 512
…a tree and trimmed a twenty-two foot log. Its circumference at the smaller end was too great for my arms to meet round it. My only instrument for moving this was a wooden pole. The tree had fallen about a hundred yards from the bank; and though it was downhill all the way to the lake, the ground was very uneven and the path so narrow that it was impossible to roll the log at all. Nevertheless, I moved it singlehanded into the lake, where I fixed it by driving piles. Passers- by spread the story of the hermit with superhuman strength, and people…
1944 · PDF PAGE 72
… And that is external religion; but Cain spake not with God, nor had the mark of initiation upon his brow, so that he was shunned of all men, until he had shed blood. And this blood was the blood of his brother. This is a mystery of the sixth key of the Tarot, which ought not to be called The Lovers, but The Brothers. “In the middle of the card stands Cain; in his right hand is the Hammer of Thor with which he hath slain his brother, and it is all wet with his blood. And his left hand he holdeth open as a sign of innocence. On his right hand is…
1929 · PDF PAGE 338
… cocaine. Apart from his obsession there was nothing wrong with the man. He enjoyed magnificent health; he was one of the best preserved men of fifty to fifty-five that I have ever seen. He was deeply religious, with more than a touch of mysticism, and a really deep insight into the Cabbala, which he understood although he knew little or nothing about it. I thought I could cure him and undertook the task. My plan in such cases is not to undeceive the patient. I proposed to treat his story as literally true in every way and to fight fire with fi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 195
195 the trees are enormous and one obtains intoxicating views of the valley framed by their dark splendour. Few men know what a view can be. The European idea is to go, preferably by train, to some high place and obtain a panorama. To me, even the noblest panoramas are somewhat monotonous. Their boundlessness diminishes their aesthetic value. To see distant prospects to the best advantage one needs a foreground. In rock climbing and travelling through mountain forests one sees nature in perfection. At every turn, the foreground picks out specia…
1929 · PDF PAGE 66
…or von Eckartshausen. With this book I retired to Wastdale Head for the Easter vacation of 1898. This period proved to be the critical moment of my early life; in two most important respects it determined the direction of my efforts. The two were intimately linked in certain ways and in order to make clear my position I must retrace my steps for a little and bring myself up to date in the matter of climbing, as also of literature. The summers of 1896 and 1897 were spent in the Alps. They were the logical development of my previous experience. I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 258
…ad of upwards for once, and that but slightly. I heard a little noise, as if something had fallen on my hat, and took no notice. A few moments later I found that my hand was wet with blood, running fast, and looking down I saw a leech on the back of it. How it managed to fall from the sky I don't know. I have seen leeches up to seven inches long; and there seems hardly any limit to the amount of blood they can assimilate. I heard of a gorged leech weighing nearly two pounds and I believe it without effort. Another strange sight in these parts i…
1906 · PDF PAGE 259
…, ‘‘ There is a raising of the right foot,” and so on, just as it happens. The thought is of course not quick enough to note all the movements or their subtle causes. For example, we cannot describe the compli- cated muscular contractions, &c. ; but this is not necessary. Concentrate on some series of simple movements. When this through habit becomes intuitive so that the thought is vea//y ‘‘ There is a raising,” as opposed to ‘‘I raise” (the latter being in reality a complex and adult idea, as philosophers have often shown, ever since Descarte…
1929 · PDF PAGE 301
…d that personal idiosyncrasy counts for more in this matter than all the other factors put together. The philosophical phlegmatic temperament of the Chinese finds opium sympathetic. But the effect of opium on a vivacious, nervous, mean, cowardly Frenchman, on an Englishman with his congenital guilty conscience or on an American with his passion for pushing everything to extremes is very different; the drug is almost certain to produce disaster. Similarly, hashish, which excites certain types of Arab, Indian, Malay or {490} Mexican to indiscrimi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 322
… one holds to it they will take pains to upset the apple cart: abandon the idea, and they immediately hand it back with a charming compliment. This is the lesson of the Book of Job. I quote the entry in full, concealing only the name of the Order. At Kobe. A.'. fair only; though I invoked all these powers of mine. Yet after, by a strong effort of will, I banished my sore throat and my surroundings, and went up in my Body of Light. Reached a room in which a cruciform table was spread, a naked man being nailed thereto. Many venerable men sat arou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 117
…me friends on their ranch. I fell in with a string of mules bound for the Pacific coast. As I passed a mule dropped from exhaustion. The men transferred his pack and left him to die. Returning after lunch, some three hours later, I found the bones of the mule picked clean and dry. One can always tell a Mexican by his peculiar habit of blowing through his cigarette before lighting it. The reason for this is that the government cigarettes are rolled by convicts, who are allowed what they consider an inadequate amount of tobacco daily for their ow…
1906 · PDF PAGE 263
…and so, though we aspire to renounce the pleasures of sense, to love and pity all that lives, yet perhaps we often fail in the accomplishment of our aspiration. But if the desire to become pitiful and pure be but honest and earnest, we have gained the Second Step upon the Path-—Sammasankappo, Right Aspiration. He whose motives are pure has no need VOL. II, to conceal the Truth—he who truly loves and who has a malice towards none, will ever speak only fair and soft words. By a man’s speech do we learn his nature, and that one whose Right Aspirat…
1929 · PDF PAGE 159
… asked the sculptor, Paul Bartlett, who cleared up the difficulty, simply and shortly: "An obelisk is a monolith." It is one of the fundamental qualities of men who understand a subject perfectly to be able to sweep away the most elaborate illusions by appeal to bedrock fact. I remember how Frank Harris once enlightened me about imitation pearls. One knows how cleverly the manufacturers of these things present their case so as to deceive the very elect. But Frank Harris said: "A {274} pearl is a stone." And the whole fantastic fabric of falseho…
1929 · PDF PAGE 171
… all practical purposes. At Hardas we were entertained by a magnificent but dirty rajah, who took me for a native. One noticed with amusement that a great many of the people whom public opinion at home classes as niggers were very much lighter in colour than any of our party. At Tolti we found another rajah equally urbane. Travel in the East is essential to any sort of understanding of the Bible. The equivalent of the word king is constantly used to describe men who may be anything from absolute monarchs over hundreds of thousands of people, to…
1929 · PDF PAGE 385
…o, its nature. My senses would thus receive the subtle impressions which I had trained them to record, so becoming cognizant of the phenomena of those worlds as ordinary men are of this. I would describe what I saw and repeat what I heard and Frater O.V. would write down my words and incidentally observe any phenomena which struck him as peculiar. (For instance: I would at times pass into a deep trance so that many minutes might elapse between two successive sentences.) Such observations may be contemptuously dismissed as imaginary; but having …
1929 · PDF PAGE 291
…-five days in this community without losing my nerve or becoming obsessed. Everyone seemed to be preoccupied with the idea that at any moment the Chinese might break out and put us all to the most cruel death. I must admit that there was a quite unusual number of really terrifying incidents; even trifling occurrences seemed too apt to take on a sinister significance. For instance, two of Litton's horses died suddenly. I diagnosed anthrax and wanted to take the obvious measures; but there was nothing to be done. The servants at the consulate had…