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Page 83 of 841929 · PDF PAGE 377
…fortless enthusiasm which leaves no room for my laziness, cynicism and similar inhibiting qualities to interfere. I did try to get a few booksellers to stock The Equinox but found myself immediately up against a blank wall of what I must call Chinese conventionality. I remember hearing of an engineer in the East who wanted to {605} built himself a house and employed a Chinese contractor. He pointed out that the work would be much easier by using bricks of a different size to that which the man was making. He obeyed, but a day later went back to…
1929 · PDF PAGE 248
…unded by Emily Brontë, from Thomas Hardy to D. H. Lawrence, whose plots turn on the sexual relation of the characters, but wherever such books are healthy, the theme is that the exaggeration of the importance of such relations leads to disaster. To return to my jeu d'esprit and the psychology involved. I have for my solicitor one of the most acute observers in the world. He said to me the other day, "You seem never to be able to do anything as anyone else would." I retorted, "No; nor by halves," which was smart --- but hardly a rebuttal. The fa…
1929 · PDF PAGE 312
…e logical of these, indeed, carry their thesis a little further and describe the Deity as "without quantity or quality". Even the Prayer Book describes Him as "without body, parts or passion", though it continues cheerfully by describing His parts and His passions in detail. The Hindus actually realize that their Parabrahman thus defined, by negating all propositions soever about him, is not a being at all in any intelligible sense of the word. Their aspiration to be absorbed in his essence depends on the thesis that "Everything is Sorrow." {51…
1929 · PDF PAGE 521
…ssed chuckle was cut short suddenly by that feeling akin to alarm which a man often feels when he is sitting up late at night enjoying a book, and is suddenly reminded, perhaps by some slight noise, of some serious matter; an unexpected visitor, can it be, outside his door? For I was aware that there was something more in what I was saying to myself than its plain implication, and it came to me by some inscrutable instinct to couch the idea otherwise. "Mercurius sum," I murmured, and now the unheard voice, not so loud as a whisper yet more comp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 369
…iting my Magical Records and the vast mass of material connected with the G.'. D.'., besides which I had my own work to do preparing the books of instruction on a special and scientific basis. Besides this, I was writing a good deal of poetry. Some of my most important work belongs to this period. "The Wizard Way", "the Garden of Janus", "After Judgment" and "Bathyllus" are especially notable. I was seeing a good deal of Frank Harris, who was publishing much of my best work in Vanity Fair. It was the first encouragement I had ever had, and in a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 384
… that I often wonder if I am not half-witted. On practically every matter which men who can hardly read, and have certainly never read a book worth reading, understand with every part of their minds better than I understand with any part of mine, even in what I have studied with sweat, at the cost of eyesight, sleep and digestion. This digression has been permissible because of its pertinence to my Algerian initiation. I may now resume the narrative. My method of obtaining "The Vision and the Voice" was as follows: I had with me a great golden …
1929 · PDF PAGE 78
…moires "to buy a black egg without haggling". I always understood that spiritual and material wealth were incommensurable. If I wanted a book on Magick and it was
1929 · PDF PAGE 394
…ntracts to do work of the kind one wants. This was fulfilled by my being commissioned to write The Diary of a Drug Fiend and the present book, as well as several things for the English Review. The fifth phase shows the man getting on with his work and obtaining renown and profit thereby, but it warns the inquirer that his position is perilous and bids him to be on his guard while not swerving from his course. From this I understood that the publication of my novel
1929 · PDF PAGE 317
…out me and perform the Operation in my physical body. For various reasons, I preferred the latter method. I was still entirely "off" The Book of the Law. I had with me my unique vellum copy of The Goetia and I proposed to use the Preliminary Invocation. I was to begin by performing this twice daily to work up a current, to acquire concentration, to invoke often. On February 11th I had spent the fifty li of the journey, P'u P'eng to Ying Wa Kuan, in making resolutions to undertake the Great Magical Retirement. That night I had a dream, in which …
1929 · PDF PAGE 250
… one or two poems at this time, notably Rosa Inferni, before Rose joined me in St. Moritz, and somehow or other I had written the fourth book of Orpheus part of which is inspired by my experience in Egypt. I published them at once. They had never satisfied me; the form was theoretically impossible. On the other hand, the lyrics and some of the dramatic dialogue are as good as anything in my work. I felt that one part of my life was drawing to a close. I made a clean sweep of my literary dustbin. I had its contents carted away and dumped on the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 388
…that I did not exist, and that all my ideas were illusions, inane and insane. I felt these facts as facts. It was the difference between book knowledge and experience. It seemed incredible that I should ever have fancied that I or anything else had any bearing on each other. All things were alike as shadows sweeping across the still surface of a lake -- - their images had no meaning for the water, no power to stir its silence. At ten minuted to ten I returned to the Aethyr. I was instantly blotted in blackness. Mine Angel whispered the secret w…
1929 · PDF PAGE 573
… that if it happened again I was through. But he, poor innocent lad, took it all as a matter of course. I am not a prude, as I hope this book may prove. But passion is one thing and dirt another. In my letter from Rome, I wrote the naked truth --- that an Oxford man should look after his wife and that if he mixed with such creatures infection was inevitable. I think my straight speaking opened his eyes. He collected the necessary cash and came to the abbey. Betty had done her best to hold him in London. Her only idea of life was this wallowing …
1929 · PDF PAGE 183
…, bar clouds; and, my first duty being to reconnoitre the mountain, I spent all day and all night watching it through my glasses, sketch-book in hand. The clouds shifted sufficiently to enable me to make a piecemeal picture, and I came to conclusion that while the south face, perhaps possible theoretically, meant a complicated climb with no half-way house, there should be no difficulty in walking up the snow slopes on the east-south-east to the snowy shoulder below the final rock pyramid. I sent back word accordingly and went on much encouraged…
1929 · PDF PAGE 483
…e had asked Evangeline Adams to meet me as being a famous astrologer. The meeting led to a lengthy association. She wanted me to write a book on astrology for her. The plan failed through her persistent efforts to cheat me out of the profits, and her obstinate ignorance of the elementary facts of nature combined with an unconquerable antagonism to the principles of applying common sense to the science. {762} I learned a good deal, nevertheless. The work kept me concentrated on the subject. At this time, it was my invariable practice to judge fr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 436
… to pay up, and sometimes by way of "making an example", in order to frighten the next batch whose blood they proposed to suck. I left a book of signed cheques in her charge; I allowed her access to my private papers. I gave no sign that I saw how she was corrupting the loyalty of Laylah and making mischief all round. Presently, at the end of 1913, she got influenza. I went to visit her unexpectedly; there, on the table by her bed, was a memorandum showing unmistakably that she had embezzled large sums of money by fraudulent manipulation of the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 58
…e of vanity in the matter as well. I thought it shameful to leave anything unread. I was influenced by Ruskin's imbecile remark that any book worth reading was worth buying, and in consequence acquired books literally by the ton. My plan of going from each author to those whom he quoted had a great advantage. It established a rational consecution in my research; and as soon as I reached a certain point the curves became re- entrant, so that my knowledge acquired a comprehensiveness which could never have been so satisfactorily attained by any a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 50
…I still clung pathetically to Badminton; I had merely reached the stage of praying pathetically to meet the good guides described in the book. I was still obsessed by the idea that it was suicidal to cross snow-covered glaciers without a rope. So I took a porter: he was quite willing to obey my orders implicitly, since I was regarded as a Wunderkind. We went up the Jungfrau by the Schneehorn-Silberhorn route, I leading up and descending last. But it was the same old story. The man couldn't stand on a snow slope. I was constantly having to misus…
1929 · PDF PAGE 97
…lume to itself. Briefly, however, the facts are as follows: Some time in the 'seventies or 'eighties, a cipher manuscript was found on a bookstall by a Dr. Woodman, a colleague in magical study of Dr. W. Wynn Westcott. It was beyond their powers to decipher it, though Mrs. Emery (Miss. Florence Farr) told me that a child could have done so. They called in a man named Samuel Liddell Mathers, a scholar and Magician of considerable eminence. The manuscript yielded to his scrutiny. It contained, among minor matters, the rubric of certain rituals of…
1929 · PDF PAGE 148
…be permitted to visit the most interesting parts of the temple, and I thought I would see what I could do to take a leaf out of Burton's book. So I disposed of my European belongings and took up my position outside a village near by, with a loincloth and a begging bowl. The villagers knew, of course, that I was an Englishman, and watched me suspiciously for some time from the edge of the jungle. But as soon as they found that I was really expert in Yoga, they lost no time in making friends. One man in particular spoke English well and was himse…
1929 · PDF PAGE 103
… it on the achievement of his purpose, to find a suitable house in a very few weeks. But a magical house is as hard to find as a magical book to publish. I scoured the country in vain. Not till the end of August 1899 did I find an estate which suited me. This was the manor of Boleskine and Abertarff, on the south-east side of Loch Ness, half way between Inverfarigaig and Foyers. By paying twice as much as it was worth, I got it, gave up my flat and settled down at once to get everything in order for the great Operation, which one is told to beg…