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Page 85 of 921929 · PDF PAGE 270
…removed. My instinct against The Book of the Law had apparently had its way. It was as if the events of eighteen months before had never taken place. I was going on with Magick on the old lines, without any particular aqmbition, but quietly exercising the powers already obtained. For instance, I had established regular communications with Soror F. (Soror Fidelis --- Mrs. Elaine Simpson). We had long interviews, visiting each other alternately. I was a little better than she was, but her body was quite material enough to impress all the senses. …
1907 · PDF PAGE 227
…n is idle and im- pertinent; but the world was ruined, as never before since the fabled destruction of Atlantis, andI trust that I shall take my readers with me when I affirm so proud a belief in the might of the heart whose in- tegrity is unassailable, clean of all crime, that I lay it down as a positive dictum that only by the decay in the mental and moral virility of Rome and not otherwise, was it possible for the slavish greed and anarchy of the Faith of Paul to gain a foothold. This faith was no new current of youth, sweep- ing away decade…
1906 · PDF PAGE 216
…‘ One-third per cent., perhaps, Of mortals ’scape its woes that knock us, And bilk the wily gonococcus.” So he is but a simple cynic Who takes the world to match his clinic ; And he assuredly may err Who, keeping cats, thinks birds have fur. You say: ‘‘ There's Berridge, Felkin, Mathers, Hysterics, epileptoids, blathers, Guttersnipe, psychopath, and mattoid, With ceremonial magic that toyed.” Granted. Astronomy’s no myth, But it produced Piazzi Smyth. What crazes actors ? Why do surgeons Go mad and cut up men like sturgeons? (These questions ar…
1929 · PDF PAGE 239
… that their message may be formulated as a single word, which word must be such that it overturns all existing beliefs and codes. We may take as instances the Word of Buddha-Anatta (absence of an atman or soul), which laid its axe to the root of Hindu cosmology, theology and psychology, and incidentally knocked away the foundation of the caste system; and indeed of all accepted morality. Mohammed, again, with the single word Allah, did the same thing with polytheisms, patently pagan or camouflaged as Christian, of his period. Similarly, Aiwass,…
1904 · PDF PAGE 75
… “One-third per cent., perhaps, Of mortals ’scape its woes that knock us, And bilk the wily gonococcus.” So he is but a simple cynic Who takes the world to match his clinic ; And he assuredly may err Who, keeping cats, think birds have fur. You say : “There’s Berridge, Felkin, Mathers, Hysteries, epileptoids, blathers, Guttersnipe, psychopath, and mattoid, With ceremonial magic that toyed.” Granted. Astronomy’s no myth, But it produced Piazzi Smyth. What crazes actors ? Why do surgeons Go mad and cut up men like sturgeons ? (The questions are t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 31
…a theology of my own which was, to all intents and purposes, Christianity. My satanism did not interfere with it at all; I was trying to take the view that the Christianity of hypocrisy and cruelty was not true Christianity. I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated. It was only when the development of my logical faculties supplied the demonstration that I was compelled to set myself in opposition to the Bible itself. It does not matter that the literature is sometimes magnificent and that in isolate…
1929 · PDF PAGE 100
…en he was a boy; his mother had brought him up as a strict Catholic. He suffered acutely from spasmodic asthma. His cycle of life was to take opium for about a month, when the effect wore off, so that he had to inject morphine. After a month of this he had to switch to cocaine, which he took till he began to "see things" and was then reduced to chloroform. I have seen him in bed for a week, only recovering consciousness sufficiently to reach for the bottle and sponge. Asthma being a sthenic disease, he was then too weak to have it any more, so …
1929 · PDF PAGE 243
…ion to H. G. Wells. As Arnold Bennett had gratified the public with a highly spiced description of me in Paris Nights, hope that he will take it as a compliment if I imitate his frankness in the matter of personalities. His accent and dialect made his English delightfully difficult. As we were leaving the restaurant, he told me that there was one thing about Wells that I mustn't mind: he spoke English with an accent. 59 rue de Grenelle, Paris 14 Feby 1911 Dear Aleister Crowley, Many thanks. I am very glad to have the volume. I will mention it i…
1904 · PDF PAGE 105
… our original small one.” The fallacy is obvious. The big circle is not infinite at all, but is itself limited by the little one. But to take away the little circle, that is the method of the esoteric Christian or the mystic. But the proces s is never perfect, because however sm all the little circle becomes, its relation with the big circle is still finite. But even allowing for a moment that the Absolute is really attainable, is the nothingness of the finity related to it really identical with that attained directly by the Buddhist Arahat? Th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 340
…hanks to God, and there is only one God, and God is most great, and there is no strength but in Him, the Exalted, the Great. It does not take me long to work myself up by means of a mantra, even of this lengthy type, into a state of ecstasy, and to proceed, if desired, from that state to actual Dhyana, by concentrating upon any appropriate cakra. By ecstasy I do not mean anything characterized by extravagant action. It is merely that I seem to myself to be floating in the air or at least to weigh about one quarter of what I actually do; that I …
1929 · PDF PAGE 358
…incidentally, is more or less the case with idle officials everywhere, but in countries like England and America they have to pretend to take their silly formalities seriously, and so what was originally no more than désoeuvrement becomes deliberate annoyance. The pettier minds get to enjoy the exercise of this tuppenny-ha'penny authority, and the regulations which were perhaps instituted in an emergency survive their usefulness, like the vermiform appendix, and become the most tedious and irritating tyranny. The Pyrenean frontiers of Spain at …
1929 · PDF PAGE 219
…ement. I confess to having been ashamed of myself. There I was, accoutred cap-a-pie from my bonnet to my claymore, and I had nothing at stake; and yet I was nervous! We were at the lawyer's on the stroke of eight, where we discovered that the sheriff was a mere flourish and that all we had to do was to consent to being married, and declare that we regarded ourselves as man and wife. A faint disgust at the prose of the proceedings induced me to elaborate them by taking out {366} my dirk and kissing it, as a pledge of my faith. I never thought of…
1929 · PDF PAGE 406
…ack to my beloved Sahara. As before, I took Neuburg with me and motored down from Algiers to bou Saâda to economize time. We proposed to take a more extended itinerary. There were certain little-known parts of the desert within comparatively easy reach. It was part of the programme to obtain visions of the sixteen Sub- Elements, as a sort of pendant to the Aethyrs, but the time was not yet. We began, but the results were so unsatisfactory that we broke off. I have, of course, no doubt that success depends entirely
1929 · PDF PAGE 541
… them tasks for which their nature fits them. In the past, the mob without will or mind have been treated without sense or scruple; a mistake socially, economically and politically, no less than from the humanitarian point of view. We must remember that each man and woman is a star, it is our duty to maintain the order of nature by seeing to it that his orbit is correctly calculated. The revolutions and catastrophes with which history is crammed are invariably due to the rulers having failed to find fitting functions for the people. The obvious…
1929 · PDF PAGE 135
… suggesting that "Jesus road both an ass and a mule, one foot on each, after the manner of a circus", if you can. You shall get ready to take the Yellow Robe while you train me to triumph over Tanha, and attain Asana, and perform Pranayama, and practise Pratyhara, and do Dharana, and demand Dhyana, and swat Samadhi, all same No. 1 topside Master Patanjali, heap holy pidgin!" An appeal couched in such chastely correct yet politely passionate phraseology could not fail to bury its barb in the bull's eye. Allan "prayed permission to quit the prese…
1929 · PDF PAGE 281
…ooses to study native religion. This disfavour extended to their own officials whenever they happened to have sufficient intelligence to take a sympathetic interest in the people and their customs and beliefs. Fielding Hall, a judge, found himself quite unpopular in official circles on account of his excellent though somewhat sentimental book The Soul of a People. The Englishman in all the colonies that I have visited, except in India, which is not a colony, is childishly jealous of his supposed superiority to the native. He has convinced himse…
1929 · PDF PAGE 149
…und it practically impossible to convince middle-class {257} Anlgo-Saxons of facts which anyone would think were bound to be known. They take refuge in angry denial. It seems to them that if they once admit the most elementary and obvious propositions, they are bound to fall headlong into a bottomless pit of bestiality. Where, in fact, they always are. {258} 31
1904 · PDF PAGE 112
…lusion, the writhing of delusion, the fetter of delusion.” There are, it may be noted, only five ( not six) notions mentioned, unless we take the last as double. Or we m ay consider the sixth as the contrary of the f ifth, and correct. The whole passage is highly technical, per haps untrustworthy; in any case, this is not the place to discuss it. T he sun of Agnosticism br eaking through the cloud of Anatta is the phenomenon to which I wished to call attention.—A. C. ness; this being the sole condition on which morals, religion, and fees to pri…
1929 · PDF PAGE 99
…r in December, of Theoricus in January and of Practicus in February. One could not proceed to Philosophus for three months, so I did not take that grade till May. The Philosophus cannot proceed to the Second Order in less than seven months; also he must be specially invited. In the spring of 1899, at some ceremony or other, I was aware of the presence of a tremendous spiritual and magical force. It seemed to me to proceed from a man sitting in the east, a man I had not seen before, but whom I knew must be Very Honoured Frater Iehi Aour, called …
1929 · PDF PAGE 177
…I left the expedition. Needless to say, I carried my point. It may strike some people that I was a little outre- cuidant about it; but I take matters like this very seriously. I would rather bear physical starvation than intellectual starvation, any day of the week. It is one of the most frightful consequences of increasing age that one finds fewer and fewer of one's contemporaries worth talking to. One is forced more and more to seek society either with the great masters of the past or with discarnate intelligences.