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Page 82 of 841929 · PDF PAGE 251
…it was the subconscious feeling that one cannot be unkind to anything so pitiable. On April 27th, the good Tartarin, who had published a book (in the Swiss language) on our expedition to Chogo Ri, illustrated with many admirable photographs but not distinguished by literary quality or accuracy (in many respects), and had lectured in Paris and other capitals on Chogo Ri, dropped in. I was heartily glad to see him. He was the same cheerful ass as ever, but he had got a bit of a swelled head and was extremely annoyed with me for not leading him in…
1929 · PDF PAGE 85
… sometimes disinclination; but, most frequently of all, through the operation of that imp of the perverse whom I blame elsewhere in this book for occasional defeats at chess. I have wished to go, I have made every preparation for going, I have perhaps reached the door, and then found myself powerless to enter. Stranger still, I have actually returned; and then, despite the strongest conscious efforts to "recapture the first fine careless rapture" of the previous visit, behaved in such a way as to make it impossible. I have never been baffled by…
1929 · PDF PAGE 381
…o be an hotel. I cannot imagine why or how the idea came to me. Perhaps I happened to have in my rucksack one of my earliest magical notebooks, where I had copied with infinite patience the Nineteen Calls or Keys obtained by Sir Edward Kelly from certain angels and written from his dictation by Queen Elizabeth's astrologer with whom he was working. The sixth book of their magical workings was translated by Casaubon and is one of the very few genuine and interesting works of Magick of any period. Much of their work still defies explanation, thou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 580
…p into the light. My proposal that Sullivan should devote his mathematical abilities to demonstrating the sublimity of the origin of The Book of the Law having failed, I bethought me of Norman Mudd. Since the skirmish at Cambridge, he had sunk below the horizon, having emigrated to the most barbarous and benighted realms of perdition; he had in fact become lecturer in applied mathematics at Grey University College, Bloemfontein. All these years, his conscience had never ceased to accuse him in respect of his conduct at Cambridge. He thought of …
1929 · PDF PAGE 197
…bsessed or had permanently fallen. On leaving for Mexico, I had asked him to take care of a dressingcase, a {334} bag and a few valuable books which I did not want to be bothered with. I called on him and asked for their return. I was received as in good standing, yet a certain constraint and embarrassment were apparent. He handed over my books, but explained that as he was just moving into a new house on the Butte Montmartre (where I found him in the appropriate turmoil), he could not lay his hands on my bags for a few days. I have never seen …
1929 · PDF PAGE 551
…days' enjoyment. With this exception I concentrated my whole energy on impressing Sullivan with the supreme importance to science of The Book of the Law. I further offered to prove the efficacy of its formulae by developing him within three months into a first-rate man. I repeated my invariable epitome, "Every man and every woman is a star." "You, being a man, are therefore a star. The soul of a star is what we call genius. You are a genius. This fact is obscured either by moral complexes which enmesh it, or lack of adequate machinery to expres…
1929 · PDF PAGE 284
…and slabs engraved with the canon, each under a canopy to protect it from the weather. I thought I had done rather well in the matter of book production, but I had to admit I was sitting with jack high against a royal flush. Mandalay is ghastly most of the year. It is practically under water all the summer. At least fifty per cent of the European residents are on the sick list and a goodly proportion of these die outright. There is little to choose between the Irrawaddy basin and the worst parts of West Africa. Yet the dwellers thereof talked a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 382
… that very day, I must take up "The Vision and the Voice" from the point where I had laid it down. We accordingly bought a number of notebooks and after dinner I invoked the twenty-eighth Aethyr by means of the nineteenth Key. When we came to compare it with those of the twenty-ninth and thirtieth Aethyrs, we found that it exhibited the same peculiarities of subject and style. This is true also of the twenty-seventh Aethyr, and so to the twenty-fourth, yet there is a continuous advance towards coherence, both in each Aethyr itself and as regard…
1906 · PDF PAGE 278
…of the Rationalist Press Association, when I suggest that that diabolical body would be delighted to bring out a sixpenny edition of his book. Iam not fighting pious opinions. But there are perfectly definite acts which encroach upon the freedom of the individual: indefensible in themselves, they seek apology in the Bible, which is now to be smuggled through as a ‘‘ poem.” If I may borrow my adversary's favourite missile, a poem in this sense is ‘‘ unhistorical nonsense."’ We should, perhaps, fail to appreciate the beauty of the Tantras if the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 224
…conventional as those of mountaineering. Sportsmen and climbers follow the fashion with frightful fidelity. Norman Collie wrote the only book on mountains which possesses any literary merit. Mummery's is good because he really had something to say, but his style shows the influence of Collie. Owen Glynne Jones produced a patent plagiarism of Mummery's style; and when it came to the brothers Abraham, the bottom was reached. And what a bottom! In fact, two. {374} Of the older writers, Leslie Stephen is the only one worth mentioning, and to him mo…
1929 · PDF PAGE 121
…ntic fancies, laid the basis of a sound magical and mystic technique. Eckenstein evidently understood what I was later to learn from The Book of the Law: "For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.1" During this time we were busy with expeditions. Eckenstein had already been to the Himalayas (in 1892); he wanted to complete my education by experience of mountains higher than the Alps, and travel in rough country among primitive people. We began by establishing a camp on Iztaccihuatl, at about …
1929 · PDF PAGE 563
…ngton Square and was suddenly seized with a direct inspiration to try my luck. "Try the sacred numbers, especially the Secret Key of The Book of the Law --- 31!" {889} Fagged as I was, I obeyed. The first number connected with my work was this very "31" and in the window was a card "Apartments to Let". A van stood at the door, which was open. I went in. The landlady showed me a large front room on the first floor, with French windows opening upon a balcony which overlooked the spirit-soothing oasis of the square; the small green oblong with its…
1929 · PDF PAGE 122
… as a rifleman to an archer) English climbers are still quite ignorant of what claws can do, or how to use them. In Mr. Harold Raeburn's book he argues amiable against them. He admits that one can walk up hard snow at easy angles without steps, but fears to do so lest, returning later in the day, he should find the snow soft, and then where would he be without a staircase? He seems to have no idea that the supreme use of claws is on ice and that the harder the ice the surer the hold. Yet Mr. Raeburn pits himself against Everest, where claws wou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 232
… There is a mocking reference to it in "Ascension Day", lines 98 to 111. The Sword of Song bears the sub-title "called by Christians the Book of the Beast". The wrapper of the original edition has on the front a square of nine sixes and the back another square of sixteen Hebrew letters, being a (very clumsy) transliteration of my name so that its numerical value should be 666. When I went to Russia to learn the language for the Diplomatic Service, my mother half believed that I had "gone to see God and Magog" (who were supposed to be Russian gi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 454
…ord of a New Aeon. But I did not regard this as being my Word. I felt myself ridiculously unworthy of the position assigned to me in The Book of the Law itself. When therefore I proposed to devote myself to my own initiations, I meant no more than this: that I would try to perfect myself in the understanding and powers proper to a Master of the Temple. At the end of 1913, I found myself in Paris with a Zelator of the Order, Frater L. T. I had been working on the theory of the magical method of the O.T.O.; and we decided to test my conclusions b…
1929 · PDF PAGE 371
…very kind and I no more allowed them to influence my action that Professor Ray Lankester is guided in his researches by Napoleon's Dream Book1. The finding of the manuscript was not even a miracle; it happened in the ordinary course of nature. There was nothing so wonderfully remarkable about its character. It is this very fact that makes us ask how it is that so ordinary a circumstance should have been the power to break down the resolute resistance of a {597} 1. Such, at least, is a tenable hypothesis. I have no direct evidence that he does n…
1929 · PDF PAGE 320
…f this work are so important that I must enter into them rather fully. It is significant of my eternal subconscious reaction against The Book of the Law that even when editing my diaries for Captain J. F. C. Fuller for "The Temple of Solomon the King", I deliberately omitted to pay any attention to them. The reference is meagre and vainglorious, and the promise to deal with them elsewhere has never been kept. It is evidently a dodge for avoiding the responsibility. A.'. in the presence of my Soror F. (The results of this and the next invocation…
1929 · PDF PAGE 35
… subject. Of course, I could not be prevented entirely from reading. I was kept very short of pocket money, so that I could not even buy books to any extent. But I used to get them now and again, smuggle them into the house inside my clothes, and lock myself into the water-closet to read them. One such book, I remember, was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. My mother considered the hansom cab as an engine specially devised by the devil and any reference to one was considered obscene. Having given an idea of the atmosphere of home, it should be intel…
1929 · PDF PAGE 537
…lowing 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 his own definite object in life. He has every right to fulfil this purpose, and none to do anything else. It is the business of the community to help each of its members to achieve this aim; in consequence {848} all rules should be made, and all questions of policy decided, by the application of this…
1929 · PDF PAGE 310
… this rough draft needed considerable revision and additions. It was in fact two years in the press. But it stands today as the standard book of reference on the subject. I must admit to be thoroughly dissatisfied with it. It is my eager wish to issue a revised edition with an adequate comment and a key to its practical use. I refuse to feel any satisfaction at knowing that, published at ten shillings, it is now quoted at three pounds fifteen shillings as a minimum. (Then why mention it! Oh, shut up.) In October of this year I began Clouds with…