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This is file 220a2-3.r1






22.




   Drunkeness is a curse and a hindrance only to slaves. Shelley's couriers were `drunk on the wind of their own speed.' Any one who is doing his true Will is drunk with the delight of Life.


   Wine and strange drugs do not harm people who are doing their will; they only poison people who are cancerous with Original Sin. In Latin countries where Sin is not taken seriously, and sex-expression is simple, wholesome, and free, drunkenness is a rare accident. It is only in Puritan countries, where self-analysis, under the whip of a coarse bully like Billy Sunday, brings the hearer to `conviction of sin,' that he hits first the `trail' and then the `booze.' Can you imagine an evangelist in Taormina? It is to laugh.


   This is why missionaries, in all these centuries, have produced no conversions whatever, save among the lowest types of negro, who resemble the Anglo-Saxon in this possession of the `fear-of-God' and `Sin' psychopathies.


   Truth is so terrible to these detestable mockeries of humanity that the thought of self is a realization of hell. Therefore they fly to drink and drugs as to an anaesthetic in the surgical operation of introspection.


   The craving for these things is caused by the internal misery which their use reveals to the slave-souls. If you are really free, you can take cocaine as simply as salt-water taffy. There is no better rough test of a soul than its attitude to drugs. If a man is simple, fearless, eager, he is all right; he will not become a slave. If he is afraid, he is already a slave. Let the whole world take opium, hashish, and the rest; those who are liable to abuse them were better dead.


   For it is in the power of all so-called intoxicating drugs to reveal a man to himself. If this revelation declare a Star, then it shines brighter ever after. If it declare a Christian -- a thing not man nor beast, but a muddle of mind -- he craves the drug, no more for its analytical but for its numbing effect. Lytton has a great story of this in `Zanoni.' Glyndon, an uninitiate, takes an Elixir, and beholds not Adonai the glorious, but the Dweller on the Threshold; cast out from the Sanctuary, he becomes a vulgar drunkard.


   ``This folly against self'' altruism is a direct assertion of duality, which is division, restriction, sin, in its vilest form. I love my neighbour because love makes him part of me; not because hate divides him from me. Our law is so simple that it constantly approximates to truism.


   ``The exposure of innocence.'' Exposure means ``putting out'' as in a shop-window. The pretence of altruism and so-called virtue ``is a lie'' it is the hypocrisy of the Puritan, which is hideously corrupting both to the hypocrite and to his victim.


   To ``lust'' is to grasp continually at fresh aspects of Nuit. It is the mistake of the vulgar to expect to find satisfaction in the objects of sense. Disillusion is inevitable; when it comes, it leads only too often to an error which is in reality more fatal than the former, the denial of `materiality' and of `animalism.' There is a correspondence between these two attitudes and those of the `once-born' and `twice-born' of William James (Varieties of Religious Experience). Thelemites are `thrice-born' we accept everything for what it is, without `lust of result,' without insisting upon things conforming with a priori ideals, or regretting their failure to do so. We can therefore `enjoy' all things of sense and rapture' according to their true nature. For example, the average man dreads tuberculosis. The ``Christian Scientist'' flees this fear by pretending that the disease is an illusion in ``mortal mind.'' But the Thelemite accepts it for what it is, and finds interest in it for its own sake. For him it is a necessary part of the Universe; he makes ``no difference'' between it and any other thing. The artist's position is analogous. Rubens, for instance, takes a gross pleasure in female flesh, rendering it truthfully from lack of imagination and analysis. Idealist painters like Bourgereau awake to the divergence between Nature and their academic standards of Beauty, falsify the facts in order to delude themselves. The greatest, like Rembrandt, paint a gallant, a hag, and a carcass with equal passion and rapture; they love the truth as it is. They do not admit that anything can be ugly or evil; its existence justifies itself. This is because they know themselves to be part of an harmonious unity; to disdain any item of it would be to blaspheme the whole. The Thelemite is able to revel in any experience soever; in each he recognizes the tokens of ultimate Truth. It is surely obvious, even intellectually, that all phenomena are interdependent, and therefore involve each other. Suppose a b c = d, a = d -b -c just as much as b = d-c-a. It is senseless to pick out one equation as `nice', and another as `nasty'. Personal predilections are evidence of imperfect vision. But it is even worse to deny reality to such facts as refuse to humour them. In the charter of spiritual sovereignty it is written that the charcoal-burner is no less a subject than the duke. The structure of the state includes all elements; it were stupid and suicidal to aim at homogeneity, or to assert it. Spiritual experience soon enables the aspirant to assimilate these ideas, and he can enjoy life to the full, finding his True Self alike in the contemplation of every element of existence.  




23.




   This refers to the spiritual experience of Identity. When one realizes one's Truth there is no room for any other conception.


   It also means that the God-idea must go with other relics of the Fear born of Ignorance into the limbo of savagery. I speak of the Idea of God as generally understood, God being `something not ourselves that makes for righteousness,' as Matthew Arnold victorianatically phrased his definition. The whiskered wowser! Why this ingrained conviction that self is unrighteous? It is the heritage of the whip, the brand of the born slave. Incidentally, we cannot allow people who believe in this `God' they are troglodytes, as dangerous to society as any other thieves and murderers. The Christians to the Lions!


   Yet, in the reign of Good Queen Victoria, Matthew Arnold was considered rather hot stuff as an infidel! Tempora mutantur, p.d.q. when a Magus gets on the job.


   The quintessence of this verse is (however) its revelation of the nature of Hadit as a self-conscious and individual Being, although impersonal. He is an ultimate independent, and unique element in Nature, impenetrably aloof. The negative electron seems to be his physical analogue. Each such electron is indistinguishable from any other; yet each is determined diversely by it relations with various positive complementary electrons.


   The verse is introduced at this juncture in order to throw light on the passage which follows. It is important to understand Hadit as the `core of every star' when we come to consider the character of those stars, his `friends' or sympathetic ideas grouped about him, who are `hermits,' individualities eternally isolated in reality though they may appear to be lost in their relations with external things.




24.




   The Christians to the Lions!


   A hermit is one who dwells isolated in the desert, exactly as a soul, a star, or an electron in the wilderness of space-time. The doctrine here put forth is that  the initiate cannot be polluted by any particular environment. He accepts and enjoys everything that is proper to his nature. Thus, a man's sexual character is one form of his self-expression; he unites Hadit with Nuit sacramentally when he satisfied his instinct of physical love. Of course, this is only one partial projection; to govern, to fight, and so on, must fulfil other needs. We must not imagine that any form of activity is ipso facto incapable of supplying the elements of an Eucharist: suum cuique. Observe, however, the constant factor in this enumeration of the practices proper to `hermits:' it is ecstatic delight. Let us borrow an analogy from Chemistry. Oxygen has two hands (so to speak) to offer to other elements. But contrast the cordial clasp of hydrogen or phosphorus with the weak reluctant greeting of chlorine! Yet hydrogen and chlorine rush passionately to embrace each other in monogamic madness! There is no `good' or `bad' in the matter; it is the enthusiastic energy of union, as betokened by the disengagement of heat, light, electricity, or music, and the stability of the resulting compound, that sanctifies the act. Note also that the utmost external joy in any phenomenon is surpassed a millionfold by the internal joy of the realization that self-fulfilment in the sensible world is but a symbol of the universal sublimity of the formula ``love under will.''


   The last two sentences demand careful attention. There is an apparent contradiction with verses 59,60. We must seek reconcilement in this way: Do not imagine that any King can die (v.21) or be hurt (v.59); strife between two Kings can therefore be nothing more than a friendly trial of strength. We are all inevitably allies, even identical in our variety; to ``love one another with burning hearts'' is one of our essential qualities.


   But who then are the ``low men,'' since ``Every man and every woman is a star?'' The casus belli is this: there are people who are veiled from themselves so deeply that they resent the bared faces of us others. We are fighting to free them, to make them masters like ourselves. Note verse 60, ``to hell with them:'' that is, let us drive them to the `hell' or secret sanctuary within their consciousness. There dwells ``the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched' that is, `the secret serpent coiled about to spring' and `the flame that burns in every heart of man' -- Hadit. In other words, we take up arms against falsehood; we cannot help it if that falsehood forces the King it has imprisoned to assent to its edicts, even to believe that his interests are those of his oppressor, and to fear Truth as once Jehovah did the Serpent.




25.




   By `the people' is meant that canting, whining, servile breed of whipped dogs which refuses to admit its deity. The mob is always afraid for its bread and butter -- when its tyrants let it have any butter -- and now and then the bread has 60% substitutes of cattle-fodder. (Beast-food, even the New York Times of November 13, 1918, E.V. has it.) So, being afraid, it dare not strike. And when the trouble begins, we aristocrats of Freedom, from the castle or the cottage, the tower or the tenement, shall have the slave mob against us. The newspapers will point out to us that ``the People'' prefer to starve, and that John D. Rockefeller for the permission to do so.


   Still deeper, there is a meaning in this verse applicable to the process of personal initiation. By ``the people'' we may understand the many-headed and mutable mob which swarms in the slums of our own minds. Most men are almost entirely at the mercy of a mass of loud and violent emotions, without discipline or even organization. They sway with the mood of the moment. They lack purpose, foresight, and intelligence. They are moved by ignorant and irrational instincts, many of which affront the law of self-preservation itself, with suicidal stupidity. The moral Idea which we call ``the people'' is the natural enemy of good government. He who is `chosen' by Hadit to Kingship must consequently be `against the ' people if he is to pursue any consistent policy. The massed maggots of `love' devoured Mark Antony as they did Abelard. For this reason the first task of the Aspirant is to disarm all his thoughts, to make himself impregnably above the influence of any one of them; this he may accomplish by the methods given in Liber Aleph, Liber Jugorum, Thien Tao, and elsewhere. Secondly, he must impose absolute silence upon them, as may be done by the ``Yoga'' practices taught in Book 4 (Part I) Liber XVI, etc. He is then ready to analyse them, to organize them, to drill them, and so to take advantage of the properties peculiar to each one by employing its energies in the service of his imperial purpose.




26.




   The magical power is universal. The Free Man directs it as He Will. Leave Him alone, or He will make you sorry you tried to interfere!


   There is here a reference to the two main types of the Orgia of Magick; I have already dealt with this matter in the Comment. Observe that in the ``mystic'' work, the union takes place spontaneously; in the other, venom is shot forth. This awakes the earth to rapture; not until then does union occur. For, in working on the planes of manifestation, the elements must be consecrated and made ``God'' by virtue of a definite rite.




27.




   Humanity errs terribly when it gets `education', in the sense of ability to read newspapers. Reason is rubbish; race-instinct is the true guide. Experience is the great Teacher; and each one of us possesses millions of years of experience, the very quintessence of it, stored automatically in our subconscious minds. The Intellectuals are worse than the bourgeoisie themselves; a la lanterne! Give us Men!


   Understanding is the attribute of the Master of the Temple, who has crossed the Abyss (or ``Pit'') that divides the true Self from its conscious instrument. (See Liber 418, ``Aha''! and Book 4, Part III). We must meditate the meaning of this attack upon the idea of ``Because.'' I quote from my diary the demonstration that Reason is the Absolute, whereof all Truths soever art merely particular cases. The theorem may be stated roughly as follows.


   The universe must be expressible either as n, or as Zero. That is, it is either unbalanced or balanced. The former theory (Theism) is unthinkable; but Zero, when examined, proves to contain the possibility of being expressed as n-n, and this possibility must in its turn be considered as p.


   This thesis appears to me a reductio ad absurdum of the very basis of our mathematical thinking.


   We knew before, of course, that all reasoning is bound to end in some mystery or some absurdity; the above is only one more antimony, a little deeper than Kant's, perhaps, but of the same character. Mathematicians would doubtless agree that all signs are arbitrary, elaboration of an abacus, and that all `truth' is merely our name for statements that content our reason; so that it is lower than reason, and within it; not higher and beyond, as transcendentalists argue. I seem never to have seen this point before, though ``men of sense'' instinctively affirm it, I suppose, The pragmatists are mere tradesmen with their definition of Truth as `the useful to be thought; ' but why not `the necessary to be thought?' There is a sort of Berkeleyan subjectivity in this view; we might put it: ``All that we can know of Truth is `that which we are bound to think.' '' The search for Truth amounts, then, to the result of the analysis of the Mind; and here let us remember my fear of the result of that analysis as I expressed them a month ago.


   This analysis is the right method after all.


   Now, are we justified in assuming, as we always do, that our reason is either correct or incorrect? That if any proposition can be shown to be congruous with `A is A' it is `true,' and so on? Does the `reason' of the oyster comply with the same canon as man's? We assume it. We make the necessity in our thought the standard of the laws of Nature; and thus implicitly declare Reason to be the Absolute. This has nothing to do with the weakness or error in any one mind, or in all minds; all that we rely on is the existence of some purely mental standard by which we could always correct our thinking, if we knew how. It is then this power which constrains our thought, to which our minds owe fealty, that we call `Truth' and this `Truth' is not a proposition at all, but a `Law!'' We cannot think what it is, obviously, as it is a final condition of philosophical thought in the same way as Space and Time are conditions of phenomenal thought. But, can there be some third type of thought which can escape the bonds of that as that can of this? ``Samadhic realization,'' one is tempted to rush in and answer -- -while angels hesitate. All my `philosophic' thought, as above, is direct reflection upon the meaning of Samadhic experience. Is it simply that the reflections are distorted and dim? I have shown the impossibility of any true Zero, and thus destroyed every axiom, blown up the foundations of my mind. In failing to distinguish between None and Two, I cannot even cling to the straw of `phrases,' since Time and Space are long since perished. None is Two, without conditions; and therefore it is a positive idea, and we are just as right to enquire how it came to be as in the case of Haeckel's monad, or one's aunt's umbrella. We are, however, this one small step advanced by our initiations, that we can be quite sure this `None-Two' is, since all possible theories of Ontology simplify out to it.


   Nevertheless, with whatever we try to identify this Absolute, we cannot escape from the fact that it is in reality merely the formula of our own Reason. The idea of Space arises from reflection upon the relations of our bodily gestures with the various objects of our senses. (Poincare -I note after reading him, months later, as I revise this note -explains this fully). So that a `yard' is not a thing in itself, but a term in the equations which express the Laws according to which we move our muscles. My knowledge consists exclusively of the mechanics of my own mind. All that I know is the nature of its norm. The judgments of the Reason are arbitrary, and can never be verified. Truth and Reality are simply the Substance of the Reason itself. My demonstration that ``None-Two is the formula of the Universe'' should then preferably be re-stated thus: ``The mind of the Beast 666 is so constituted that it is compelled to conceive of an Universe whose formula is None-Two.''


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