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Page 188 of 1971929 · PDF PAGE 132
…to slip between my ribs. Fidelis was now a married woman. She was still playing at Magick, as another might play at bridge. But her true life was dresses, dinners and dances; and her thought were taken up by her husband and her lover. (In hot countries, white men being relaxed by the climate, European women, over- stimulated for the same reason, almost inevitably practise polyandry.) And she had won the first prize at a fancy dress ball by appearing in her adept's robes and regalia! No hope here, then! Nay, nor elsewhere! I saw clearly enough t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 482
…freedom from all interruption, the absence of temptations to distraction: Cefalu realizes my idea of heaven. But I am pledged to give my life to the establishment of the Law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." So, if the operations on behalf of that Law are being tampered by the insensate belief that I ever was, am, or ever could be, disloyal to my country, which I love with an unreasoning passion, altogether beyond the interference of my intellectual opinions, I am willing to make this public statement as to what I d…
1906 · PDF PAGE 252
…otentiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite, through all varieties of matter ; through infinite diversities of' life and thought, possibly, through modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are competent to form any, back to the indefinable latency from which they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the cosmos is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a permanent entity as of a changeful process, in which naught endures save the flow of energy and the rational order which pervades i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 407
…. Camel drivers have no sense at all; in England they would get either the Embankment or the Home Office. This imbecile had been all his life in the desert and had not yet learnt that he and his camel needed food. He never took any with him, an having reached a suitable spot thirty miles from the nearest blade of grass, complained of hunger. I had hoped he would have found some thistles. This by parenthesis. We wandered on and presently emerging from the gorge came upon an Arab, who spoke of a Bedouin encampment downstream. This we found a few …
1944 · PDF PAGE 16
…g any secrets which he was sworn not to dis‐ close. As soon as one possesses the true attributions of these trumps, the Tarot leaps into life. One is intellectually knocked down by the rightness of it. All the difficulties created by the tra‐ ditional attributions as understood by the ordinary scholar, disappear in a flash. For this rea‐ son, one is inclined to credit the claim for the promulgators of the cipher manuscript, that they were guardians of a tradition of Truth. 3. The Tarot and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One must now dig…
1944 · PDF PAGE 25
…of the number 4. It is also important for him to notice that even in the tenfold ar‐ rangement, the number 4 takes its part. The Tree of Life can be divided into four planes: the number I corresponds to Fire; numbers 2 and 3, to Water; numbers 4 to 9, to Air; and the number 10 to Earth. This division corresponds to the analysis of Man. The number I is his spiritual essence, without quality or quantity; the numbers 2 and 3 represent his creative and transmissive powers, his virility and his intelligence; the numbers 4 to 9 describe his mental an…
1944 · PDF PAGE 116
…he outside, whereas True Will should spring, a fountain of Light, from within, and flow unchecked, seething with Love) into the Ocean of Life. This is the true idea of Silence; it is our Will which issues, perfectly elastic, sublimely Protean, to fill every interstice of the Universe of Manifestation which it meets in its course. There is no gulf too great for its immeasurable strength, no strait too arduous for its imper‐ turbable subtlety. It fits itself with perfect precision to every need; its fluidity is the warrant of its fidelity. Its fo…
1904 · PDF PAGE 101
…as limited in all sorts of way s. At the Fall, for instance, Tetragrammaton Elohim has to summon his angels hastily to guard the Tree of Life, lest he should be proved a liar. For had it occurred to Adam to eat of that Tree before their transgression was discovered, or had the Serpent been aware of its properties, Adam would indeed have lived and not died. S o that a m ere accident saved the rem nants of the already be- smirched reputation of the Hebrew tribal Fetich. 1 An expression they carefully avoid using. — A.C. 2 I retain this sly joke f…
1906 · PDF PAGE 251
…he Cosmic Process.’’ And in the same essay, though he is disposed to deny more than the rudiments of consciousness to the lower forms of life, he is quite clear that pain varies directly (to put it loosely) with the degree of consciousness. Cf. also ‘* Animal Automatism,” pp. 236-237. (2) SorRow’s CauseE.—The cause of sorrow is desire. I take desire here to include such a phenomenon as the tendency of two molecules of hydrogen and chlorine to combine under certain conditions. If death be painful to me, it is presumably so to a molecule ; if we …
1929 · PDF PAGE 7
…k, or the three-God trick. He has also the clearest visualization of some of the people who surrounded him in the first six years of his life, which were spent in Leamington and the neighborhood, which he has never revisited. In particular, there was an orange-coloured old lady named Miss Carey who used to bring him oranges. His first memory of speech is his remark. "Ca'ey, onange"1; this, however, is remembered because he was told of it later. But he is in full conscious memory of the dining-room of the house, its furniture and pictures, with …
1929 · PDF PAGE 133
…tion that has looked time in the face without a blush; an atheism with good manners. There broods the old wise man, he who has conquered life without the aid of death, who may survive these strenuous youths and even the worn barren widow mumbling meaningless memories in her toothless mouth.
1929 · PDF PAGE 16
…ncomfortable in order to see an extra? Also, you can't improve a waterfall by stagecraft! There is the skeleton of quite a philosophy of life in this. As to the Scottish Highlands, the boy's mind had been so poisoned by romance that he saw nothing that he can remember. The scenery was merely a setting for silly daydreams of Roderick Dhu! Three other episodes of the Redhill period are pertinent; not that they are in themselves very significant, save that two of them exhibit Alick in the character of a normally mischievous boy with some skill in …
1929 · PDF PAGE 79
…rprise and rage --- for when I am writing a poem I would show Azrael himself the door! I told him frankly and firmly that I had given my life to religion and that he did not fit into the scheme. I see now how imbecile I was, how hideously wrong and weak it is to reject any part of
1929 · PDF PAGE 275
…his spurt of genius is an eloquent portrait of my mind at this time. I was absolutely convinced of the supreme importance of devoting my life to attaining Samadhi, conscious communion with the Immanent Soul of the Universe. I believed in mysticism. I understood perfectly the essence of its method and the import of its attainment, but I felt compelled to express myself in a satirical and (it might appear to some) almost scandalous form. I testified to the tremendous truth by piling fiction upon fiction. I did not know it. I did not suspect it, b…
1929 · PDF PAGE 316
…idge of continuity which they should support. The practical point was that I had no proof whatever that there was any purpose in my past life or could be in my future. I again quote from "The Temple of Solomon the King": Baffled again and again, the fall with his horse supplied the one factor missing in his calculations. He had repeatedly escaped death in matters almost miraculous. "Then I am some use after all!" was his conclusion. "I am indeed SENT to do something." For whom? For the universe; no partial good could possibly satisfy his equati…
1929 · PDF PAGE 212
…few notes of this period --- November 1902 to April 1903. It seems rather strange that I should have been able to get such an epitome of life into so short a period; at least I reached old age. I went back to Boleskine almost as a ghost might retire to his tomb at cock-crow. In May I wrote a very clear rsum of my progress. It will be as well to quote it. In the year 1899 I came to Boleskine House and put everything in order with the object of carrying out the Operation of Abra-Melin the Mage.
1944 · PDF PAGE 52
…f the Euphrates men worshipped Oannes, or Dagon, the fish god. The fish as a symbol of fatherhood, of motherhood, of the perpetuation of life generally, constantly recurs. The letter N. (Nun, N, in Hebrew means Fish) is one of the original hieroglyphs stand‐ ing for this idea, apparently because of the mental reactions excited in the mind by the con‐ tinual repetition of this letter. There are thus a number of gods, goddesses, and eponymous heroes, whose legends are functions of the letter N. (With regard to this letter, see Atu XIII.) It is co…
1929 · PDF PAGE 412
…will be later described. The ritual of the 30° had taken hold of my imagination. The idea of my proposed play, The Scorpion, sprang into life full-armed. I have always found that unless I jump on such inspiration like a tiger, I am never able to "recapture the first fine careless rapture". I accordingly jumped out of the train at El Kantara and wrote it that evening and next day. I had done little creative work during the walk. My Retirements, as a rule, especially when they involve physical hardship, keep me in intimate communion with the univ…
1904 · PDF PAGE 80
…two about Indra, for example——’ “It was done. Beautiful was the young girl’s face as s he s prang mature from the womb of Matter, on her life-journey of an hundred thousand y ears. Of all Indra’s flute-girls she played and sang the sweetest. Yet ever some remembrance, dim as a pallid ghost that fleets down the long avenues of deodar and moonlight, stole in her brain; and her song was ever of love and death and music from beyond. “And one day as she sang thus the deep truth stole into being and she knew the Noble Truths. So she turned her flute …
1929 · PDF PAGE 462
…itions arising from the unprecedented development of the country combine to make it impossible even to imagine stability in any plane of life. There is thus a radical distinction between Europe and her daughter. We know more or less what to expect in any set of circumstances. Heterogeneous as we are there is a common ground of thought and action. We are even able to draw reasonable conclusions about Asia and Africa. London and Tokyo are sufficiently alike in essentials to make our relations intelligible, but in spite of the community of languag…