FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
4,043 matching pages
Page 201 of 2031929 · PDF PAGE 426
… an automobile, without finding a single place to let that corresponded in the smallest degree with our ideas. Virakam's brat --- a most god-forsaken lout --- was to join us for the Christmas holidays, and on the day he was due to arrive we motored out as a forlorn hope to Posilippo before meeting him at the station at four o'clock or thereabouts. But the previous night Virakam had a dream in which she saw the desired villa with absolute clearness. (I had been careful to say nothing to her about the Persian nuts, so as to have a weapon against …
1929 · PDF PAGE 203
…f having complied some books of reference on life in Shropshire or Straffordshire or some such place. I don't know which is which, thank God; I do not understand
1929 · PDF PAGE 200
…had armed himself {338} with all the documents; and they had reduced him to despair. (Let me say at once that Rodin was not a man, but a god. He had no intellect in the true sense of the word; his was a virility so superabundant that it constantly overflowed into the creation of vibrating visions. Naively enough, I haunted him in order to extract first-hand information about art from the fountain head. I have never met anyone --- white, black, brown, yellow, pink or spot-blue --- who was so completely ignorant of art as Auguste Rodin! At his be…
1929 · PDF PAGE 533
… beginning of the next Chokmah day I found myself on the edge of the oasis which I was to make my home. I had identified myself with the god of my Grade of Magus, Tahuti, the Lord of the Word, and I was invested accordingly with the attributes proper to him. The last of the officers in my initiation was the Ape of Thoth. This creature translates into action his thought or, in other words, is the instrument through which his idea assumes sensible form. This Ape became my permanent companion. At this moment, she is beside me in a bathing house at…
1929 · PDF PAGE 450
…t and made no mistake. My work was infinitely varied, yet uniformly distinguished. I expressed the soul of Moscow in a poem "The City of God", published some months afterwards in the English Review. It is a "hashish dream come true". Every object of sense, from the desolation of the steppes and the sheer architecture of the city, to the art, attitude and amusements of the people, stings one to the soul, each an essential element of a supreme sacrament. At the same time, the reality of all these things, using the word in its grossest sense, cons…
1929 · PDF PAGE 232
…86} intention of confusing the record, and perhaps even of making people think me untrustworthy in this stupendous circumstance. But the gods beat me all round. They took care that the event should not depend on my goodwill; should be beyond the power of my ill-will to thwart. More yet; they have made it evident that they purposely smashed my career as mystic and Magician in the very hour of my success, when the world was at my feet, in order that they might the more utterly demonstrate their power to use me for their own purposes. We landed at…
1929 · PDF PAGE 320
…ur astral interviews; but she insisted that we should study Liber Legis together. I had my copy with me. (It is very remarkable that the gods managed to look after me so that I am never in lack of anything that I {521} need for the performance of any particular work. My deliberate carelessness, my attempts to destroy things, are always quite useless. The gods always perform the necessary miracle to enable me to have at hand anything that may be necessary at the moment.) So my diary reads on April 18th: Studying Liber Legis. Decide to ask F. to …
1929 · PDF PAGE 550
…editor permitted. After Sylvia's confinement, we would confer more about the proper course of action. He then went off to Mentone to bid god-speed to the girl he really loved, a woman writer who was living with one of his editors so long as her lungs would let her (they lasted till 1922). Alas for gods whose wings are clipped by love and their feet hobbled by habit. We were to meet Sullivan at Marseilles, sailing for Palermo with or without him as his editor might permit. The few days of absence had wrecked
1929 · PDF PAGE 548
…ghtful catastrophes which were bound to result did not happen. It was a little like those crofters at foyers waiting to see the wrath of God consume the aluminum works that scorned the sabbath. Was she dreaming? Were we really living, loving and laughing, healthy and happy, when, by all rules, we ought to be shrieking with agony in the madhouse, the gaol or the lock hospital! Worse still, she missed all those familiar features to be observed in even the best of families, petty jealousies, scolding, quarrelling, bickering, tyranny and the rest. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 125
…r. Most of the lower slopes are covered with fine loose ash, abominable to ascend but a joy to glissade. Our friend, between the fear of God, the fear of death, and the fear of us, had lost all mastery of his emotions. We had taken the rope off and shot down the slopes to show him how to do it, but he was in mortal terror. The felling that the ground was slipping under his feed drove him almost insane. I hardly know how he got down to us at last, except that on those loose slopes he could hardly help it. Having put our man through the mill, we …
1929 · PDF PAGE 210
…ible as its abuse. "Just so many asinine hee-haws", as Browning said. The artist must live continually in such intense intimacy with the God-head that he is not to be disturbed either by starvation or success. There were of course a number of fleas on the Chat Blanc; men whose association with art was a sort of superstition, men who bored us and yet were as difficult to get rid of as the lumber that accumulates in a house. But sometimes a stranger would introduce a new note of genuine amusement. One day one of the Americans introduced the "grea…
1929 · PDF PAGE 537
…he next three years, then, I was to build, as it were, an ark of refuge, in which that which was worth saving from the Aeon of the Dying God might be in safety while the floods covered the face of the earth; and it is really not for me but for history to record and interpret the events of my life following my return to England at the end of 1919. I will only say that my main idea had been to found a community on the principles of The Book of the Law, to form an archetype of a new society. The main ethical principle is that each human being has …
1929 · PDF PAGE 504
504 thousand ways, the principles involved have replaced those of the Dying God. Little remains but to accept Thelema consciously as a statement of law, so that any given problem may be solved by applying it to each case. The man Crowley had been chosen to enunciate this Law, that is, to exercise the essential function of a Magus. But he had yet to understand it, a task which involved the crossing of the Abyss, already described; and further, to identify his will with the Law, so that his personality might act as the focus of its energy. Before…
1929 · PDF PAGE 341
… up into {552} enthusiasm over some ill-defined religious or political idea; but these Moors were invoking what I must call their tribal god, for want of a better term. They were creating him by pouring their personal enthusiasm into the pot, so to speak. I had no doubt that the individual deity thus invented (I can find no better term) could exist organically, so to speak, and I began to understand how the prophets of old had succeeded in inventing their gods, neither personal nor universal, but representing the Platonic idea, corresponding to…
1929 · PDF PAGE 78
… incorruptible integrity. The incarnation was a mystical or magical operation which took place in every man. Each was himself the Son of God who had assumed a body of flesh and blood in order to perform the work of redemption. The in-dwelling of the Holy Ghost was a sanctification resulting from the completion of the great work when the self had been crucified to itself and raised again in incorruptible immortality. I did not yet see that this conception reposed on metaphysical bases as untenable as those of orthodoxy. There was no attempt to e…
1929 · PDF PAGE 137
…r in major matters. Consider only how the idea that epidemics, the failure of the crops and military misfortune were due to the wrath of God, prevented the development of science, agriculture and the art of war. Last spring, 1922, there was a drought in Sicily. The priests made a mighty puja and prayed for rain. The rain came and did more harm than the drought; then the drought took hold again and lasted all the summer either in spite of the intercessions of Cybele, or whatever they call her nowadays, or because she was not to be propitiated by…
1929 · PDF PAGE 205
…ite of his exaggerated respect for the memory of Queen Victoria, J---, would join in with his ripe and generous {346} wit. Handsome as a god, with yet a spice of devil's laughter lurking there, he would sit and enjoy the treasures of the conversation, adding at the proper interval his own rich quota of scholarly jest. Needless to say, so brilliant a galaxy attracted all the false lights of the time. T---, the braggart, the mediocre painter, the lusty soi-disant maquereau of marchionesses, would seek admission (which was in theory denied to none…
1929 · PDF PAGE 30
…ntil I got to Trinity and I have never felt the smallest temptation to excess. My father had, however, not been a smoker, saying that if God had intended men to smoke He would have supplied a chimney at the top of the head2. I had no hesitation, therefore in making a great point of smoking. I had no thought of connecting the service of the "third King" with the reproduction of the species, and therefore no reason to suppose that my father had ever so far forgotten himself. I spent my whole time trying to enrol myself under the royal banner; but…
1929 · PDF PAGE 344
…I arise from dreams of thee" and "O lover, I am lonely here" are legitimate. It is the sacrament by which man enters into communion with God. There remain my narrative and dramatic books on love. The Tale of Archais is simply jejune; I apologize and pass on. The Mother's Tragedy, "The {556} Fatal Force", Jezebel, Tannhäuser, all treat love not as an object in itself, but on the contrary, as a dragon ready to devour any one less than St. George. Alice is partly excusable, because it is really a lyric, when all is said and done. In any case, I do…
1906 · PDF PAGE 215
…g whatever to do with it. Suppose Edison, having perfected the phono- graph, had said, ‘‘I alone can make dumb things speak ; argal, Iam God."’ What would the world have said if telegraphy had been ex- ploited for miracle-mongering purposes? Are these miracles less or greater than those of the Gospels? Before we accept Mrs. Piper,* we want to know most exactly the conditions of the ex- periment, and to have some guarantee of the reliability of the witnesses. At Cana of Galilee the conditions of the transformation are not stated—save that they g…