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Page 119 of 1211929 · PDF PAGE 566
…d when we parted, knowing well that I counted on him for this to stand between me and actual starvation. I could have born with his treatment of myself, but he used me to injure {893} others. In our early conversations he had argued with perfect justice that the English market for the English Review was hopeless, at least for a long time, and that therefore the only chance of restoring solvency was to push it in America. It was obvious that I could do this with success. He agreed to my plan, and I wrote accordingly to several of my friends, fir…
1929 · PDF PAGE 310
…e most of Rosa Coeli, to find letters awaiting me to tell me of the tragedy of which I have given an account elsewhere. {503} From the moment of landing I struck a sequence of physical shocks. As I struggled to my feet after the blasting bolt of my bereavement, I found myself with an infected gland in the groin which required excision. The first day I left the nursing home I got a chill in the right eye which obstructed a nasal duct and required a whole series of extremely painful operations which proved unsuccessful. In the course of these, I …
1929 · PDF PAGE 341
341 With these weapons the men cut themselves on the head (very rarely elsewhere) until the blood was streaming from their scalps on every side. They were, of course, quite unconscious of any pain, and those of them who were actually blinded by the blood were yet able to see. The excitement of the crowd was as great as that of the celebrants themselves, but it was rigorously suppressed. I cannot say that the ring kept absolute silence; I doubt whether I was sufficiently cool to make any reliable observations, and I certainly was beyond the stag…
1929 · PDF PAGE 10
… the names themselves --- Enoch, Arphaxad, Mahaleel. He often wonders whether this curious trait was symptomatic of his subsequent attainments in poetry, or whether it indicates the attraction which the Hebrew Cabbala was to have for him later on. With regard to the question of salvation, by the way, the theory of the exclusive Plymouth Brethren was peculiar, and somewhat trying to a logical mind. They held predestination as rigidly as Calvin, yet this nowise interfered with complete freewill. The crux was faith in Christ, apparently more or le…
1929 · PDF PAGE 312
312 Daäth and the establishment of this Abyss. Regeneration, redemption, atonement and similar terms mean alike the reunion of the human with the divine consciousness. Arrived at the highest possible point of human attainment by regular steps, one finds oneself on the brink of the Abyss, and to cross this one must abandon utterly and for ever all that one has and is. (In unscientific mysticism the act is represented sentimentally as the complete surrender of the self to God.) In unsectarian English, the act implies first of all the silencing of…
1929 · PDF PAGE 366
366 and we kept on dancing, each for himself. Then we became aware of the presence of a stranger. Some of us counted the men present and found there was one too many. One of the weaker brethren got scared, or one of the stronger brethren remembered his duty to science --- I don't know which --- and switched on the light. No stranger was to be seen. We asked Brother Lucifer --- as I may call him! --- why he had broken the spell and each of us independently confirmed his story. We all agreed about the appearance of the visitor. We had all been im…
1929 · PDF PAGE 48
…s animal life ipso facto to the level of poetry. There have always been in me two quite incompatible personalities with regard to my judgment of men and in practical matters. One of them possesses great instinctive shrewdness partaking of cynicism; the other an innocence amounting almost to imbecility. Der reine Thor! In certain respects, this later quality is calculated. Thus, I have always refused to believe that I am being cheated, even when I know the facts perfectly well. I have deliberately made up my mind that it is not worth while to al…
1929 · PDF PAGE 294
…ow price, provided that one would pay with the dollars which the merchant was being subsidized to accept. "When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own." It is certainly amusing to watch them cutting their own throats in order to cut ours more efficiently later on. I only wish we could stop the second part of the process. We reached Yunchangfu on the fifth day from Tengyueh. Our first march took us up the valley of the Shweli, which we crossed on a floating bamboo bridge. The road from there to Pingho winds uphill for about five thousand…
1929 · PDF PAGE 553
553 Alas for these men who 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…
1929 · PDF PAGE 118
118 Mexico City was full of American professional gamblers and confidence men. I saw a good deal of two of these; a lank grey Yankee named McKee and his genial jackal Wilson, or some such name. After a few days' acquaintance Wilson approached me with the following proposal. It appeared 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, valu…
1907 · PDF PAGE 247
…e's just the chance you'd have, ii. 149 Here, then, lives the pretty piece of goods, lii, 38 Here we come to what in a way is the funda- mental joke of these precepts, ii. 193 Heroic helpmeet of the silent home! ili. 118 Hers was the first sufficient sacrifice, ii. 52 He who desires desires a change, ili. 87 Holy as heaven, the home of winds, i. 95 Horace, in the fruitful Sabine country, 1. 127 How barren is the Valley of Delight, i. 179 How easy to excite derision, ii. 176 How hardly a man, iii. 151 How light and how agreeable, i. 156 How swee…
1929 · PDF PAGE 369
…t rid of her dipsomania once and for all. She capitulated and the necessary measures were taken. This left me free for my proposed Retirement, which I decided to undertake in Paris rather than London. The details of every single minute of my life for the next fortnight are accurately recorded in "John St. John". Here I need only say that the work was successful beyond all expectations. I not only achieved my stated object, but obtained access to a reserve of energy which carried me on for years, performing Herculean labours without conscious ef…
1929 · PDF PAGE 78
…rotherhood. I yearned passionately for illumination. I could imagine nothing more exquisite than to enter into communion with these holy men and to acquire the power of communicating with the angelic and divine intelligence of the universe. I longed for perfect purity of life, for mastery of the secret forces of nature, and for a career of devoted labour on behalf of "the Creation which groaneth and travaileth". My poetry at this time is charged to the highest point with these aspirations. I may mention the dedication to Songs of the Spirit, "T…
1929 · PDF PAGE 137
…etween the normal satisfaction of bodily appetites and the obvious conditions of success. 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, …
1906 · PDF PAGE 211
…TES 205 corrected, and the involved tissues brought back to tone, in obedience to currents started from the brain. So for all other phenomena. effect which is truly and miraculous. Our Ceremonial Magic fines down, then, to a series of minute, though of course empirical, physiological experiments, and whoso will carry them through intelligently need not fear the result. I have all the health, and treasure, and logic I need; I have notime to waste. ‘‘ There is a lion in the way.” For me these practices are useless; but for the benefit of others l…
1929 · PDF PAGE 361
…ver to accept a farthing for any form of instruction, giving advice, or any other service whose performance depended on my magical attainments. I regarded myself as having sacrificed my career and my fortune for initiation, and that the reward was so stupendous that it made the price pitifully mean, save that, like the widow's mite, it was all I had. I was therefore the wealthiest man in the world, and the least I could do was to bestow the inestimable treasure upon my poverty-stricken fellow men. I made it also a point of absolute honour never…
1929 · PDF PAGE 205
…us Shakespearian Lecturer, Dr. Louis Umfraville Wilkinson, has dared to confess publicly that Clouds without Water is {345} "the most tremendous and the most real love poem since Shakespeare's sonnets" in the famous essay "A Plea for Better Morals". But I anticipate. Clouds without Water came four years later. I am still sitting sleepily in the twilight in Europe; after my day's labour three years long in the blazing sun of the great world. I spent many of my evenings at a little restaurant called the Chat blanc in the rue d'Odessa, where was "…
1929 · PDF PAGE 170
170 My duty was to see that the caravans crossed the comparatively short section of the pass which the men dreaded. So I spent most of the morning rushing backwards and forwards, encouraging one, exhorting another and {290} giving a hand to a third. I had no reason to suppose that the reconnaissance of the Austrians was radically wrong. By the time the last man had come safely through the critical section, I was already tired; and when I started to follow, I found to my dismay that the Matayun side of the pass, instead of being steep, was at a …
1929 · PDF PAGE 261
…nce of absolute perversity. The following day showed me that such perversity was only too likely to put a spoke in the wheel. The arrangement was that I was to find my way to Camp 3, which I had already been able to choose through my glasses. I left Tartarin and Reymond in charge of the bulk of the coolies, having pointed out to them the best way across the glacier. It was more or less intricate going compared with Piccadilly, but it was certainly less trouble than an average march on the Baltoro. My object in going ahead was merely to make sur…
1929 · PDF PAGE 583
583 In due course, Frater O. P. V. arrived at the abbey and on his heels two Oxford men: Pinney and Bosanquet. We put them up for three nights. They were flabbergasted to find us perfectly normal decent people. They were keen rock climbers. I was too ill to join them, but I dragged myself to the foot of the crags and showed them the two problems which I had not carred to attempt without a trustworthy companion. These were the outside way up the Cavern Pitch in Deep Gill and the Deep Gill pillar. They succeeded in climbing both, to my great joy.…