February 20, 1989 e.v. key entry by
 Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.   --- needs further proof reading
 (c) O.T.O.   disk 2

 O.T.O.
 P.O.Box 430
 Fairfax, CA  94930
 USA

 (415) 454-5176 ----  messages only.


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                               18





      During the May term of 1898 I met another man who, in his own way,
 was interested in many of the same things as I was myself.  His name was
 Gerald Festus Kelly.  He is described in the telephone book as an artist;
 and the statement might have passed unchallenged indefinitely had not the
 Royal Academy recently elected him as an associate.  He is hardly to be
 blamed for this disgrace.  He struggled manfully.  Even at the last
 moment, when he felt the thunderclouds about to break over his head, he
 made a last desperate coup to persuade the world that he was an artist by
 marrying a model.  But the device deceived nobody.  The evidence of his
 pictures was too glaring.  The effort, moreover, completely exhausted his
 power of resistance; and he received the blow with Christian resignation.
 It saddens me more hat I can say to think of that young life which opened
 with such brilliant promise, gradually sinking into the slough of
 respectability.  Of course it is not as if he had been able to paint; but
 to me the calamity is almost as distressing as if that possibility had
 ever existed.  For he completely hypnotized me into thinking that he had
 something in him.  I took his determination to become an artist as
 evidence of some trace of capacity and I still hope that his years of
 unremitting devotion to a hopeless ambition will earn him the right to
 reincarnate with some sort of soul.
      We met in a somewhat romantic way.  My "Aceldama" had just been issued
 and was being sold privately in the university at half-a-crown.  (There
 were only eighty-eight copies, with ten on large paper and two on vellum.)
 One of the mottoes in "Aceldama" is a quotation from Swinburne's "The
 leper".  I had not acknowledged the authorship of "Aceldama;" it was by A
 Gentleman of the University of Cambridge" in imitation of one of Shelley's
 earlier books.
      Now, there was a bookseller in the town with whom I had few dealings,
 for he was the most nauseatingly hypocritical specimen of the pushing
 tradesman that I ever set eyes on.  He was entirely irreligious and did a
 considerable business in the kind of book which is loathsomely described
 as "curious".  But he was out to get the clerical and academic custom and
 to this end adopted a dress and manner which would have been affected in
 the sweetest of young curates.  Somehow or other, a copy of "Aceldama" got
 into his hands; he showed it to Kelly, who was so excited by the quotation
 from Swinburne that he found out who I was, and a meeting was arranged.
 His knowledge of both art and literature was encyclopaedic, and we became

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 very intimate, projecting collaboration in an Arthurian play and a new
 magazine to take the place of "The Yellow Book" and "The Savoy," which had
 died with Beardsley.  Noting much came of this at the time, but the
 meeting had in it the germs of important developments.  The critical event
 of the year was my meeting with Oscar Eckenstein at Wastdale Head.
      Eckenstein was a man twenty years older than myself.  His business in
 life was mathematics and science, and his one pleasure mountaineering.  He
 was probably the best all-round man in England, but his achievements were
 little known because of his almost fanatical objection to publicity.  He
 hated self-advertising quacks like the principal members of the Alpine
 Club with an intensity which, legitimate as it was, was almost overdone.
 His detestation of every kind of humbug and false pretence was  an
 overmastering passion.  I have never met any man who upheld the highest
 moral ideals with such unflinching candour.
      We did a few climbs together that Easter and made a sort of
 provisional agreement to undertake an expedition to the Himalayas when
 occasion offered.  He had been a member of the Conway expedition of 1892,
 but had quitted the party at Askole, principally on account of his disgust
 with its mismanagement.  The separation was engineered, moreover, from the
 other side.  For what reason has never been clearly explained.  It would
 evidently be improper to suggest that they had made up their minds to
 record at least a partial success and did not want an independent witness
 to their proceedings on the  glacier.
      One incident of that expedition is well worth mentioning.  A survey
 was being made with instruments which lacked various essential parts, and
 on Eckenstein pointing out the uselessness of making observations of this
 kind, the reply was, "Yes, I know, but it's good enough for the Royal
 Geographical Society."  Anything of this sort roused Eckenstein to a pitch
 of indescribably violent rage.  I could not have had a better teacher in
 matters of conscience.  He taught me thoroughness and accuracy in every
 department of the game.
      It illustrate one point.  I had considered myself a very good
 glissader, and as compared with the other people whom I met on the
 mountain side, even such experts as Norman Collie, I had little to learn.
 But Eckenstein showed me that I was not even a beginner.  He made me start
 down assorted slopes from all sorts of positions, and to pick myself up
 into any other desired position; to stop, to increase my pace or to jump,
 at the word of command.  Why "starting from all sorts of positions"?  The
 idea was that one might conceivably fall on to a snow slope or have to
 jump to it from a great height, and it was therefore  necessary to know
 how to deal with such situations1.

 {151}


        1  See "The Diary of a Drug Fiend," pp. 159-60.




















      The combination was ideal.  Eckenstein had all the civilized
 qualities and I all the savage ones.  He was a finished athlete; his right
 arm, in particular, was so strong that he had only to get a couple of
 fingers on to a sloping ledge of an overhanging rock above his head and he
 could draw himself slowly up by that alone until his right shoulder was
 well above those fingers.  There is a climb on the east face of the Y-
 shaped bolder (so called because of a forked crack on the west face) near
 Wastdale Head Hotel which he was the only man to do, though many quite
 first-rate climbers tried it.  Great as his strength was, he considered it
 as nothing, quoting a Bavarian schoolmaster of his acquaintance, who could
 tear a silver florin in half with his fingers.
      He was rather short and sturdily built.  He did not know the meaning
 of the word "fatigue".  He could endure the utmost hardship without
 turning a hair.  He was absolutely reliable, either as leader or second
 man, and this quality was based upon profound and accurate calculations.
 He knew his limitations to a hair's breadth.  I never saw him attempt
 anything beyond his powers; and I never knew him in want of anything from
 lack of foresight.
      He had a remarkable sense of direction, thought inferior to my own.
 But his was based upon rational considerations, that is to say, he could
 deduce where north was from calculations connected with geology, wind and
 the law of probabilities; whereas my own finer sense was purely psychical
 and depended upon the subconscious registration in my brain as to the
 angles through which my body had turned during the day.
      One point, however, is not covered by this explanation, nor can I
 find anything satisfactory or even plausible.  For instance, one day (not
 having seen moonrise that month or in the district) we attempted to climb
 the Yolcan di Colima; we had sent back our "mozos" with the camp to
 Zapotlan, intending to cross the mountain to the ranch of a gentleman to
 whom we had introductions.  We had watched the volcano for a week and
 more, in the hope of discovering some periodicity in its eruptions, which
 we hailed to do.  We accordingly took our chance and went across the
 slopes until the rocks began to burn our feet through our boots.  We
 recognized that it was hopeless to proceed.
      We decided to make for the farm and soon reached a belt of virgin
 jungle where the "chapparal" and fallen timber made it almost impenetrable.
 The trees were so thick that we could rarely see the sky.  The only
 indication for progress was to keep on down hill.  The slopes were
 amazingly complicated, so that at any moment we might have been facing
 east, south or west.  The dust of the rotten timber almost choked and
 blinded us.  We suffered tortures from thirst, our water supply being
 extremely limited.  Night fell; it was impossible to see our hands in
 front of us.  We accordingly lit a fire to

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 keep off the jackals and other possibilities, which we heard howling round
 us.  We naturally began to discuss the question of direction; and I said,
 "The moon will rise over there", and laid down my axe as a pointer.
 Eckenstein independently laid down his, after a rather prolonged mental
 calculation.  When the moon rose we found that my axe was within five
 degrees and his within ten degrees of the correct direction.  This was
 only one of many such tests; and I do not see in the least how I knew,
 especially as astronomy is one of the many subjects of which my knowledge
 is practically nil.  In spite of innumerable nights spent under the stars,
 I can recognize few constellations except the Great Bear and Orion.
      Besides my sense of direction on the large scale, I have a quite
 uncanny faculty for picking out a complicated route through rocks and ice
 falls.  This is not simply a question of good judgment; for in any given
 route, seen from a distance, there may always be a passage, perhaps not
 twenty feet in height, which would  render the whole plan abortive.  This
 is especially the case with ice falls, where much of the route is
 necessarily hidden from view.  Obviously, one cannot see what is on the
 other side of a s‚rac whose top one has theoretically reached.  Yet I have
 never been wrong; I have never been forced to turn back from a climb once
 begun.
      I have also an astonishing memory for the minutest details of any
 ground over which I have passed.  Professor Norman Collie had this quality
 very highly developed, but he paid me the compliment of saying that I was
 much better than he was himself.  This too, was in my very early days when
 he was teaching me many quite rudimentary points in the technique of rock
 climbing.  Again, we have a question of subconscious physical memory.  I
 am often quite unable to describe even the major landmarks of a climb
 which I have just done, but I recognize every pebble as I come to it if
 asked to retrace my steps.  Efforts on my part to bring up a mountain into
 clear consciousness frequently create such a muddle in my mind that I
 almost wonder at myself.  I make such grotesque mistakes that I am not far
 from doubting whether I have been on the mountain at all: yet my limbs
 possess a consciousness of their own which is infallible.  I am reminded
 of the Shetland ponies (see Wilkie Collin's "The Two Destinies") which can
 find their way through the most bewildering bogs and mist.  This faculty
 is not only retrospective --- I can find my way infallibly over unknown
 country in any weather.  The only thing that stops me is the interference
 of my conscious mind.
      I have several other savage faculties; in particular, I can smell
 snow and water, though for ordinary things my olfactory sense is far below
 the average.  I cannot distinguish perfectly familiar perfumes in many
 cases; that is, I cannot connect them with their names.
      Eckenstein and I were both exceedingly expert at describing what lay

 {153}





















 behind any mountain at which we might be looking.  In his case, the
 knowledge was deduced scientifically; in mine, it was what one must call
 sheer clairvoyance.  The nearest I could get to understanding his methods
 was judging by the glow above the ridge of a mountain whether the other
 side was snow-covered, and estimating its steepness and the angle of its
 rocks by analogy with the corresponding faces of the mountains behind us,
 or similar formations elsewhere.  I should hardly be necessary to point
 out the extraordinary practical value of these qualities in deciding one's
 route in unknown country.
      In the actual technique of climbing, Eckenstein and I were still more
 complementary.  It is impossible to imagine two methods more opposed.  His
 climbing was invariably clean, orderly and intelligible; mine can hardly
 be described as human.  I think my early untutored efforts, emphasized by
 my experience on chalk, did much to form my style.  His movements were a
 series, mine were continuous; he used definite muscles, I used my whole
 body.  Owing doubtless to my early ill-health, I never developed physical
 strength; but I was very light, and possessed elasticity and balance to an
 extraordinary degree.
      I remember going out on Scafell with a man named Corry.  He was the
 ideal athlete and had gone through a course of Sandow; but had little
 experience of climbing at that time.  I took him up the North Climb of
 Mickledoor.  There is one place where, while hunting for holds, one
 supports oneself by an arm stretched at full length into a crack.  The arm
 is supported by the rock and the hand grasps a hold as satisfactory as a
 sword hilt.  The inconceivable happened; Corry fell off and had to be
 replevined by the rope.  I was amazed, but said nothing.  We continued the
 climb and, reaching the top of the Broad Stand, took off the rope.  By way
 of exercise, I suggested climbing a short, precipitous pitch above a
 sloping slab.  There was no possible danger, it was within the powers of a
 child of six; but Corry came off again.  I was standing on the slab and
 caught him by the collar as he passed on his way to destruction.
      After that, we put on the rope again and returned by descending, I
 think, Mickledoor Chimney.  On the way down to Wastdale, he was strangely
 silent and embarrassed, but finally he made up his mind to ask me about
 it.
      "Do you mind if I feel your arm?" he said.  "It must be a marvel."
      I complied and he nearly fainted with surprise.  My muscles were in
 quantity and quality like those of an early Victorian young lady.  He
 showed my his own arm.  There could not have been a finer piece of anatomy
 for manly strength.  He could not understand how, with everything in his
 favour, he had been unable to maintain his grip on the best holds in
 Westmorland.
      A curious parallel to this incident happened in 1902 on the
 expedition

 {154}




















 to Chogo Ri.  We had an arrangement by which a pair of ski could be
 converted into a sledge for convenience in hauling baggage over snow-
 covered glaciers.  When the doctor and I proposed to move from Camp 10 to
 Camp 11 we set up this sledge and packed seven loads on it.  We found it
 quite easy to pull.  This was clearly an economy of five porters and we
 started two men up the slope.  To our astonishment they were unable to
 budge it.  They called for assistance; until the whole seven were on the
 ropes.  Even so, they had great difficulty in pulling the sledge and
 before they had gone a hundred yards managed to upset in into a crevasse
 They settled the matter by taking two loads (between 100 and 120 pounds)
 each and went off quite merrily.  It is useless to have strength unless
 you know how to apply it.
      Eckenstein recognized from the first the value of my natural
 instincts for mountaineering, and also that I was one of the silliest
 young asses alive.  Apart from the few priceless lessons that I had had
 from Collie, I was still an amateur of the most callow type.  I had no
 idea of system.  I had achieved a good deal, it is true, but a mixture of
 genius and common sense; but I had no regular training and was totally
 ignorant of the serious business of camp life and other branches of
 exploration.
      We arranged to spend the summer in a tent on the Sch”nb�hl glacier
 under the Dent Blanche, primarily with the idea of fitting me for the
 Himalayan expedition, and secondarily with that of climbing the east face
 of the Dent Blanche by a new route which he had previously attempted with
 Zurbriggen.  They had been stopped by a formation which is exceedingly
 curious and rare in the Alps --- slopes of very soft snow set in an
 unclimbable angle.  He thought that my capacity for swimming up places of
 this sort might enable us to bag the mountain.
      I hope that Eckenstein has left adequate material for a biography and
 made arrangements for its publication.  I had always meant to handle the
 matter myself.  But the unhappy termination of his life in phthisis and
 marriage, when he had hoped to spend its autumn and winter in Kashmir
 meditating upon the mysteries which appealed to his sublime spirit, made
 all such plans nugatory.
      I fell it one of my highest duties to record in these memoirs as much
 as possible relative to this man, who, with Allan Bennett, stands apart
 from and above all others with whom I have been really intimate.  The
 greatness of his spirit was not inferior to that of such giants as Rodin;
 he has an artist no less than if he had actually produced any monument to
 his mind.  Only his constant manhandling by spasmodic asthma prevented him
 from matching his genius by masterpieces.  As it is, there is an immense
 amount in his life mysterious and extraordinary beyond anything I have
 ever known.  For instance, during a number of years he was the object of
 repeated murderous

 {155}




















 attacks which he could only explain on the hypothesis that he was being
 mistaken for somebody else.
      I must record one adventure, striking not only in itself, but because
 it is of a type which seems almost as universal as the "flying dream".  It
 possesses the quality of the phantasmal.  It strikes me as an adventure
 which in some form or other happens to a very large number of men; which
 occurs constantly in dreams and romances of the Stevensonian order.  For
 instance, I cannot help believing that something of the kind has happened
 to me, though I cannot say when, or remember the incidents.  I have
 written the essence of it in "The Cream Cricean"; and some phantasm of
 similar texture appears to me in sleep so frequently that I wonder whether
 its number is less than one weekly, on the average.  Sometimes it
 perpetuates itself night after night, recognizable as itself despite
 immense variety of setting, and haunting my waking hours with something
 approaching conviction that it represents some actuality.
      This story is briefly as follows.  One night after being attacked in
 the streets of Soho, or the district between that section of Oxford street
 and the Euston Road, he determined, in case of a renewed assault, to walk
 home by a roundabout and unfamiliar route.  Somewhere in the neighbourhood
 of the Caledonian Road he thought that he was being followed --- it was
 not late at night and somewhat foggy.  To make sure, he turned into a
 narrow passage on to which opened the gardens of a row of houses, in one,
 and only one, of which lights were visible.  The garden door of this house
 was open and he dodged in to see whether the men he suspected were
 following.  Two figures appearing at the end of the passage, he quietly
 closed the door behind him with the intention of entering the house,
 explaining his position and asking to be allowed to leave by the front
 door.  The door was opened by a young and beautiful woman in fashionable
 evening dress.  She appeared of good social position and, on his
 explaining himself, asked him to sty to supper.  He accepted.  No servants
 appeared, but on reaching the dining-room --- which was charmingly
 furnished and decorated with extremely good pictures, Monet, Sisley and
 the like, with sketches or etchings by Whistler, all small but admirable
 examples of those masters --- he found a cold supper for two people was
 laid out.  Eckenstein remained for several hours, in fact until daylight,
 when he left with the understanding that he would return that evening.  He
 made no note of the address, the street being familiar to him and his
 memory for numbers entirely reliable.  I think that he was somehow
 prevented from returning the same evening; I am not quite sure on this
 point.  But if so, he was there twenty-four hours later.  He was surprised
 to find the house in darkness and astounded when no further inspection he
 saw a notice "To Let".  He knocked and rang in vain.  Assuming that he
 must have mistaken the number, unthinkable as the

 {156}





















 supposition was, he explored the adjacent houses, but found nothing.
 Annoyed and intrigued, he called on the agent the next morning and visited
 the house.  He recognized it as that of his hostess.  Even the lesser
 discolorations of the wallpaper where the bookcase and pictures had been
 testified to the identity of the room.  The agent assured him that the
 house had not been occupied for three months.  Eckenstein pointed to
 various tokens of recent occupancy.  The agent refused to admit the
 conclusion.  They explored the back part of the premises and found the
 French windows through which Eckenstein had entered, and the garden gate,
 precisely as he had left them.  On inquiry it appeared that the house was
 vacant owing to the proprietor (a bachelor of some sixty years old, who
 had lived there a long while with a man and wife to keep house for him)
 having been ordered to the south of France for the winter.  He had led a
 very retired life, seeing no company; the house had been furnished in
 early Victorian style.  Only the one room where Eckenstein had had supper
 was unfurnished.  The agent explained this by saying that the old man had
 taken the effects of his study with him to France, for the sake of their
 familiarity.
      The mystery intrigued Eckenstein immensely and he returned several
 times to the house.  A month or so later he found the two servants had
 returned.  The master was expected back in the spring.  They denied all
 knowledge of any such lady as described; and there the mystery rests, save
 that some considerable time later Eckenstein received a letter, unsigned,
 in evidently disguised handwriting.  It contained a few brief phrases to
 the effect that the writer was sorry, but it could not be helped; that
 there was no hope for the future, but that memory would never fade.  He
 connected this mysterious communication with his hostess, simply because
 he could not imagine any other possibility.
      I can offer no explanation whatever, but I believe every word of the
 story, and what is most strange is that I possess an impenetrable
 conviction that something almost exactly the same must have happened to
 me.  I am reminded of the one fascinating episode which redeems the once-
 famous but excessively stupid and sentimental novel "Called Back" from
 utterly abject dullness.  There is also an admirable scene in one of
 Stevenson's best stories, "John Nicholson".  A similar theme occurs in "Dr."
 "Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde," "The Sire de Mal‚troit's Door", and "A lodging for
 the Night".  There are similar ideas in oriental and classical literature.
 The fascination of the central idea thus seems a positive obsession to
 certain minds.
      Is it somehow symbolic of a widespread wish or fear?  Is it, as in
 the case of the Oedipus complex, the vestige of a racial memory --- "In
 the beginning was the deed"?  (This phrase magnificent concludes Freud's
" "Totem and Taboo.")  Or can it be the actual memory of an event in some
 previous incarnation or in some other illusion than what we call real
 life?

 {157}



















      In the course of writing this story down, the impression of personal
 reminiscence has become steadily stronger.  I now recall clearly enough
 that I have actually experienced not one but many such adventures, that
 is, as far as the spiritual essence is concerned.  I have repeatedly,
 sometimes by accident but more often on purpose, gone into the wrong room
 or the wrong house, with the deliberate intention of finding romance.
 More often than not, I have succeeded.  As to the sequel, I have often
 enough failed to return; and here again sometimes the fore of
 circumstances has been responsible, 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 any such inexplicable incident as the
 abandonment of the room, though I have sometimes failed to find the
 expected girl.
      Talking the whole matter over with my guide, philosopher and friend,
 Frater O.P.V., he finds the whole story extraordinarily gripping.  He
 finds the situation nodal for the spirit of romance.  An extraordinary
 number of vital threads or "nerves" of romance.
      He attaches great significance to the failure of Eckenstein to keep
 the appointment.  It seems to him as if the whole business were a sort of
 magical ordeal, that Eckenstein should have been awake to the miraculous
 character of the adventure and kept his appointment though hell itself
 yawned between him and the house.  The main test is his realization that
 the incident is high Magick, that if he fail to grasp its importance, to
 understand that unless he return that night the way will shut fro ever.
 He suggests that by failing to appreciate the opportunity at its full
 value he had somehow missed the supreme chance of his life, as if the
 "wrong house" were the gateway to another world, an inn, so to speak, on
 the outskirts of the City of God.  In recent years I have been constantly
 alert and on the look-out for something of the kind.  Whenever my plans
 are disarranged by a number of apparently trivial and accidental
 circumstances, I look eagerly for the possibility that the situation to
 which they lead may prove the opening scene in some gigantic drama.
 Numerous episodes in these memoirs illustrate this thesis.  One might even
 say that the whole book is a demonstration of how the accumulation and
 consequence of large numbers of apparently disconnected facts have
 culminated in bringing "the time and the place, and the loved one all
 together".
      Eckenstein's parents had escaped from Germany in '48, or thereabouts,
 as political exiles, or so I imagine; I do not remember any details.  But
 he was educated at Bonn and knew Bloody Bill intimately.  This luckless
 despot

 {158}

















 was at that time a young man of extraordinary promise, taking himself with
 the utmost seriousness as realizing the gigantic responsibilities of his
 inheritance.  He was intensely eager to fit himself to do his best for
 Germany.  He was openminded and encouraged Eckenstein's endeavours to
 introduce eight-oared rowing into the university, and used his influence
 to obtain permission of officers to lay by their swords when playing
 tennis.
      One incident amuses me greatly.  Students were exempt from the
 general law and could not be punished for any act which was not mentioned
 by name in the statues.  The brighter spirits would then accordingly
 search the statues for gaps.  It was, for instance, "strengstens verboten"
 to tie night-watchmen to lightning conductors during thunderstorms.
 Eckenstein and his friends waited accordingly for the absence of
 thunderstorms and then proceeded to tie up the watchmen.
      He was as thoroughly anglicized as possible.  The chief mark of the
 old Adam was a tendency to professional dogmatism.  When he felt he was
 right, he was almost offensively right; and on any point which seemed to
 him settled, the coefficient of his mental elasticity was zero.  He could
 not imagine the interference of broad principles with the detailed results
 of research.  The phrase "general principles" enraged him.  He insisted on
 each case being analysed by itself as it arose.  This is all right, but it
 is possible to overdo it.  There are many circumstances which elude
 analysis, yet are perfectly clear if examined in the light of the
 fundamental structure of the human organism.  For all that, he was exactly
 the man that I needed to correct my tendency to take things for granted,
 to be content with approximations, to jump at conclusions, and generally
 to think casually and loosely.  Besides this, my experience of his moral
 and intellectual habits was of the greatest service to me, or rather to
 England, when it was up to me to outwit Hugo M�nsterberg.
      Eckenstein's moral code was higher and nobler than that of any other
 man I have met.  On numerous points I cannot agree; for some of his ideas
 are based on the sin complex.  I cannot imagine where he got it from, he
 with his rationalistic mind from which he excluded all the assumptions of
 established religion.  But he certainly had the idea that virtue was
 incompatible with enjoyment.  He refused to admit that writing poetry was
 work, though he admired and loved it intensely.  I think his argument must
 have been that if a man enjoys what he is doing, he should not expect
 extra remuneration.
      Eckenstein share the idiosyncrasies of certain very great men in
 history.  He could not endure kittens.  He did not mind grown-up cats.
 The feeling was quite irrational and conferred mysterious powers! for he
 could detect the presence of a kitten by means of some sense peculiar to
 himself.  We used to tease him about it in the manner of the young, who
 never understand that anything may be serious to another person which is
 not so to them.  One

 {159}



















 Easter the hotel was overcrowded; and five of us, including Eckenstein and
 myself, were sleeping in the barn.  One of Eckenstein's greatest friends
 was Mrs. Bryant, whose beautiful death between Chamonix and Montanvers in
 1922 was the crown of a noble life.  She had brought her niece, Miss
 Nichols, who to intrepidity on rocks added playfulness in less austere
 surroundings.  I formally accuse her of putting a kitten under
 Eckenstein's pillow in the barn while we were in the smoking-room after
 dinner.  If it had been a cobra Eckenstein could not have been more upset!
      He had also an idiosyncrasy about artificial scent.  One day my wife
 and a friend came home from shopping.  They had called at the chemist's
 who had sprayed them with "Shem-el-nessim".  We saw them coming and went
 to the door to receive them.  Eckenstein made one rush --- like a bull ---
 for the window of the sitting-rrom, flung it open and spent the next
 quarter of an hour leaning out and gasping for breath.
      Eckenstein was a great connoisseur of puzzles.  It is extremely
 useful, by the way, to be able to occupy the mind in such ways when one
 has not the conveniences or inclination for one's regular work, and there
 is much time to kill in a hotel or a tent in bad weather.  Personally, I
 have found chess solitaire and triple-dummy bridge or skat as good as
 anything.
      Eckenstein was a recognized authority on what is known as Kirkwood's
 schoolgirl problem, but we used to work all sorts of things, from problems
 connected with Mersenne's numbers and Fermat's binary theorem to the
 purely frivolous attempt to represent any given number by the use of the
 number four, four times --- neither more nor less, relating them by any of
 the accepted symbols of mathematical operations.  Thus:

               18 = 4x(4.4)+.4
               38 = ³4__ + . + 4
               106 = ³4__ + 4.4-4
               128 = 44ö4-Sq.Rt.of  4

his has been done up to about 170, with the exception of the number 113,
and thence to 300 or thereabouts with only a few gaps.  I solved 113 with
the assistance of Frater Psi  and the sue of a subfactorial, fur
Eckenstein would not admit the use of this symbol as fair.
     He was also interested in puzzles involving material apparatus, one of
which seems worth mention.  He was in Mysore and a travelling conjurer sold
him a whole bundle of more or less ingenious tricks.  One of these
consisted simply of two pieces of wood; one a board with a hole in it, the
other shaped somewhat like a dumb-bell, the ends being much too big to go
through the hole.  Eckenstein said that he was almost ready to swear that
he saw the man take them up separately and rapidly put them together,

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in which condition he had them and was never able to take them apart.  He
explored the surface minutely for signs of complexity of structure but
without success.  I never saw the toy, he having sent it to Mr. W. W. Rouse
Ball, a great authority on such matters, but also baffled in this case.
      We were naturally always interested in any problems concerned with
the working out of a difficult route, and here his probity on one occasion
made him the victim of an unscrupulous child of Shaitan.  The villain
appeared in the guise of an old and valued friend, saying "Is it possible
to reach Q from P (mentioning two places in London) without passing a
public house?"  Eckenstein accordingly took his walks in that direction and
after endless trouble discovered a roundabout way which fulfilled the
condition.  Communicating the joyful news, his friend replied, "Good for
you!  Here's something else.  Can you get to the Horseshoe, Tottenham Court
Road, from here without passing a public house?"  I do not know how many
pairs of alpine boots Eckenstein wore out on the problem, before asking his
friend, "Can it be done?"  A telegram assured him that it could.  More
boots went the way of all leather and then he gave up. "It's perfectly
easy," said the false friend, "don't" pass them --- go in!"
     (The psychologist will observe that this atrocious piece of misplaced
humour was made possible by the earlier problem having been genuine,
difficult and interesting, thus guaranteeing the spoof.)
     One of his favourite amusements was to calculate the possibility of
some published description of a phenomenon.  For instance, in the novel "She"
here is a "rocking stone" about which there are sufficient data in the book
to enable an expert to say whether it was possible in nature.  He decided
that it was, but only on the assumption that it was a cone balanced on its
apex.
     I suppose that every form of navigation possesses its peculiar
dangers.  I remember Eckenstein telling me of an adventure he once had with
Legros.  One might be tempted to think that very little harm could come to
a barge in a dock on the Thames, bar being cut down by a torpedo ram.  But
the facts are otherwise.  It was the first time that either of them had
been in charge of this species of craft, which they had to manoeuvre in
order to inspect a wharf which required some slight repair.  The gallant
little wave-waltzer displaced a hundred and twenty tons and was called the
"Betsy Anne."
     They boarded the barge without difficulty, but to get her going was
another matter.  The fellow-countrymen of Cook, drake and Nelson were not
behindhand with wise advice couched in language of frankness and fancy.
They learned that the way to make a barge go was to walk up and down the
broad flat gunwale with a pole.  She was certainly very hard to start; but
it got easier as she gathered way.  They entered into the spirit of the
sport and began to run up and down with their poles, exciting each other to
emulation with cheerful laughter.  Pride filled their souls as they
observed

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that their rapid mastery of the awkward craft was appreciated on shore, as
the lusty cheering testified.  It encouraged them to mightier efforts and
before long they must have been making well over two miles an hour.  Then
Eckenstein's quick ear asked him whether the shouting on shore was so
wholly the expression of unstinted admiration as he had supposed.  He paid
greater attention and thought he detected yells of coarse ridicule mingled
with violent objurgation.  He thought he heard a word at the conclusion of
a string of extremely emphatic epithets which might easily have been
mistaken for "Fool!"  At this point Legros stopped poling, said shortly and
unmistakably "Hell!" and pointed to the wharf, which, as previously stated,
stood in need of some trifling repairs.  It was now not more than fifty
yards away and seemed to them to be charging them with the determination of
an angry elephant.  They realized the danger and shouted for advice.  The
answer was, in essence, "Dive!"  It was, of course, hopeless to attempt to
check or even to deflect the "Betsy Anne."  They dived, and a moment later
heard the rending crash of the collision, and were nearly brained by baulks
of falling timber.  "Well," said Eckenstein, a they drove home to change
their muddy garments, "We've done a good morning's work, anyhow.  That
wharf is no longer in need of trifling repairs."  Both it and the "Betsy"
"Anne" kept the neighbourhood in matchwood for the next two years.  Oh! for a
modern Cowper to immortalize the maritime John Gilpin!







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                              19


     We had one or two other people with us, in particular a man named
Paley Gardner, who had been with Eckenstein at Wastdale at Ester.  He was a
man of giant strength, but could not be taught to climb the simplest rocks.
He always tried to pull the mountain down to him instead of pulling himself
up to it!  He was one of the best fellows that ever walked and had led an
extraordinary life of which he was too silent and too shy to speak.  But he
loosened up to some extent in camp; and two of his adventures are so
remarkable that I feel they ought to be rescued from oblivion.
     He was a rich man, but on once occasion found himself stranded in
Sydney and too lazy to wire for money.  At this juncture he met a man who
offered to take him trading in the islands.  They got a schooner, a crew
and some stores; set off; sold their stuff; and started home.  Then small
pox broke out on board and every man died by Paley, who sailed the
schooner, singlehanded, seven days back to Sydney.
     On another occasion he found himself at Lima during the battle; if you
can call it a battle when everyone thought it the best bet to shoot anyone
he saw as a mater of general principle.  Paley, being a man of peace, took
up a position on a remote wall with the idea of shooting anyone that
approached in case of his proving unfriendly.  However, the first person
that arrived was obviously an Englishman.  They recognized each other and
proceeded to concert measures for escape.
     The newcomer, a doctor with long experience of South America,
suggested that if they could only cross a broad belt of country inhabited
by particularly malignant Indian tribes, and the Andes, they could reach
the head waters of the Amazon and canoe down to Iquitos, where they would
be in clover, as the doctor was a close friend of Dom Somebody, a powerful
minister or other high official.  They started off on this insane programme
and carried it out (after innumerable adventures) with success.  Arriving
at Iquitos, ragged and penniless, but confident that the minister's
friendship would put them on a good wicket at once, they sought the local
authorities --- and learnt that their friend had been hanged a few days
before, and that anyone who knew him might expect a similar solution to his
troubles!
     The two Englishmen were thrown into prison, but broke out and bolted
down the river.  The hue and cry was raised; but, just as their pursuers
were closing in on them, the managed to steal a fishing smack, with which
they put out into the open Atlantic.  Luckily, a few days later, when they
were on

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the brink of starvation, they fell in with an English steamer bound for
Liverpool.  The captain picked them up and took them home in triumph.
     The weather made it impossible to do any serious climbing; but I
learnt a great deal about the work of a camp at high altitudes, from the
management of transport to cooking; in fact, my chief claim to fame is,
perhaps, my "glacier curry".  It was very amusing to see these strong men,
inured to every danger and hardship, dash out of the tent after one
mouthful and wallow in the snow, snapping at it like mad dogs.  The
admitted, however, that it was very good as curry and I should endeavour to
introduce it into London restaurants if there were only a glacier.
Perhaps, some day, after a heavy snowfall ---
     I had been led, in the course of my reading, to "The Kabbalah Unveiled,"
by S. L. Mathers.  I didn't understand a word of it, but it fascinated me
all the more for that reason, and it was my constant study on the glacier.
My health was not good during this summer and I had gone down to Zermatt
for a rest.  One night in the beer hall I started to lay down the law on
alchemy, which I nowise understood.  But it was a pretty safe subject on
which to spread myself and I trust that I impressed the group of men with
my vast learning.  However, my destiny was in ambush.  One of the party,
named Julian L. Baker, was an analytical chemist.  He took me aside when
the group broke up and walked back to the hotel with me.  He was himself a
real practical alchemist --- I don't know whether he had been fooled by my
magpie display of erudition.  He may simply have deduced that a boy,
however vain and foolish, who had taken so much pains to read up the
subject, might have a really honest interest after all; and he took me
seriously.  He had accomplished some remarkable work in alchemy.  For one
thing, he had prepared "fixed mercury"; that is to say, the pure metal in
some form that was solid at ordinary temperatures.
     As for me, I made no mistake.  I felt that the moment of opportunity
was come.  I had sent out the S.O.S. call for a Master during that Easter
at Wastdale Head; and here was a man who was either one himself or could
put me in touch with one.  It struck me as more than a coincidence that I
should have been led to meet him partly through my ill-health and partly
through my fatuous vanity.  That night I resolved to renew my acquaintance
with Baker in the morning and tackle him seriously about the intricate
question which lay close about my heart.
     The morrow dawned.  At breakfast I inquired for Baker.  He had left
the hotel; no one knew where he had gone.  I telegraphed all over the
valley.  He was located at the Gorner Grat.  I sped up the mountain to find
him.  Again he had gone.  I rushed back.  In vain I hunted him through the
hotels and at the railway station.  At last I got a report than an
Englishmen corresponding to

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his description had started to walk down the valley to Brigue.  I hurled
myself headlong in pursuit.  This time I was rewarded.  I caught up with
him some ten miles below Zermatt.  I told him of my search for the Secret
Sanctuary of the Saints and convinced him of my desperate earnestness.  He
hinted that he knew of an Assembly which might be that for which I was
looking.  He spoke of a Sacrament where the elements were four instead of
two.  This meant nothing to me; but I felt that I was on the right track.
I got him to promise to meet me in London.  He added, "I will introduce you
to a man who is much more of a Magician than I am."
     To sum the matter in brief, he kept his word.  The Secret Assembly
materialized as the "Hermetic Order of the G.'. D.'.,"  and the Magician
as one George Cecil Jones.
     During the whole summer, the weather got steadily worse and my health
took the same course.  I found myself obliged to leave the camp and go to
London to see doctors.  I took rooms in an hotel in London, attended to the
necessary medical treatment and spent my time writing poetry.  The play
"Jephthah" was my principal work at this period.  It shows a certain advance
in bigness of conception; and has this notable merit, that I began to
realize the possibility of objective treatment of a theme.  Previous to
this, my lyrics had been more or less successful expressions of the ego;
and I had made few attempts to draw characters who were not more than
Freudian wish phantasms --- I mean by this that they were either
projections of myself as I fancied myself or aspired to be; otherwise,
images of women that I desired to love.  When I say "to Love", I doubt
whether the verb meant anything more than "to find myself through".  But in
"Jephthah," weak as the play is, I was really taking an interest in other
people.  The characters are not wholly corrupted by self-portraiture, I
suck to the Hebrew legend accurately enough, merely introducing a certain
amount of Cabbalistic knowledge.
     The passionate dedication to Swinburne is significant of my literary
hero-worship.  With this play were published (in 1899) a number of lyrics
entitled "Mysteries, Lyrical and Dramatic".  The shallow critic hastily
assumed that the influence of Swinburne was paramount in my style, but on
rereading the volume I do not think that the accusation is particularly
justifiable.  There are plenty of other authors who might more reasonably
be served with an affiliation summons.  Indeed, criticism in England
amounts to this: that if a new writer manifests any sense of rhythm, he is
classed as an imitator of Swinburne; if any capacity for thought, of
Browning.
     I remember one curious incident in connection with this volume.  I had
a set of paged proofs in my pocket one evening, when I went to call on W.
B. Yeats.  I had never though much of his work; it seemed to me to lack
virility.  I have given an extended criticism of it in "The Equinox" (vol. I
No. II, page 307).  However, at that time I should have been glad to have a

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kindly word from an elder man.  I showed him the proofs accordingly and he
glanced through them.  He forced himself to utter a few polite
conventionalities, but I could see what the truth of the matter was.
     I had by this time become fairly expert in clairvoyance, clairaudience
and clairsentience.  But it would have been a very dill person indeed who
failed to recognize the black, billious rage that shook him to the soul.  I
instance this as a proof that Yeats was a genuine  poet at heart, for a
mere charlatan would have known that he had no cause to fear an authentic
poet.  What hurt him was the knowledge of his own incomparable inferiority.
     I was little of him and George Moore.  I have always been nauseated by
pretentiousness; and the Celtic revival, so-called, had all the mincing,
posturing qualities of the literary Plymouth Brother.  They pretended to
think it an unpardonable crime not to speak Irish, though they could not
speak it themselves; and they worked in their mealymouthed way towards the
galvanization of the political, ethnological and literary corpse of the
Irish nation.  Ireland has been badly treated, we all know; but her only
salvation lay in forgetting her nonsense.  What is the use of setting up a
scarecrow provincialism, in re-establishing a barbarous and fantastic
language which is as dead as Gothic and cannot boast sufficient literature
to hold the attention of any but a few cloistered scholars --- at the price
of cutting Ireland off from the main stream of civilization?  We see
already that the country has slunk into the slough of anarchy.  When the
Kilkenny cats have finished shooting each other from behind hedges, the
depopulated island will necessarily fall into the hands of practical
colonists, who will be content to dwell peaceably together and communicate
with the world in a living language.
     Like Byron, Shelly, Swinburne and Tennyson, I left the university
without taking a degree.  It has been better so; I have accepted no honour
from her; she has had much from me.
     I wanted the spirit of the university and I passed my examinations in
order to be able to imbibe it without interference from the authorities,
but I saw no sense in paying fifteen guineas for the privilege of wearing a
long black gown more cumbersome than the short blue one, and paying
thirteen and fourpence instead of six and eightpence if I were caught
smoking in it.  I had no intention of becoming a parson or a schoolmaster;
to write B.A. after my name would have been a decided waste of ink.
     I felt that my career was already marked out for me.  Sir Richard
Burton was my hero and Eckenstein his modern representative, as far as my
external life was concerned.  A vaccalaureate would not assist me
noticeably in the Himalayas or the Sahara.  As for my literary career,
academic distinction would be a positive disgrace.  And with regard to my
spiritual life, which I already felt to be the deepest thing in me, the
approbation of the faculty was beneath troubling to despise.  I have always
objected to incurring positive

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disgrace.  I see no sense in violating conventions, still less in breaking
laws.  To do so only gives one unnecessary trouble.
     On the other hand, it is impossible to make positive progress by means
of institutions which lead to one becoming a lord chancellor, an
archbishop, an admiral, or some other flower of futility.  I had got from
Cambridge what I wanted: the intellectual and moral freedom, the spirit of
initiative and self-reliance; but perhaps, above all, the indefinable tone
of the university.  The difference between Cambridge and Oxford is that the
former makes you the equal of anybody alive; the latter leaves you in the
invidious position of being his superior.

               "NOTE ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN"
                   "OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE"

     One of the most significant points in English character is thrown into
relief by the contemplation of Oxford and Cambridge.  I should be very
puzzled to have to say that that point is, but the data are unmistakable.
The superficial likeness between the universities is very clear, yet their
fundamental spiritual difference can only be described as "a great gulf
fixed".  Contrast this with America, where even long experience does not
enable one to distinguish at a glance between men from the four principal
universities, or even to detect, in most cases, the influence of any
university training soever, as we understand the idea.  But to mistake an
Oxford for a Cambridge man is impossible and the converse exceedingly rare.
     I hope it is not altogether the blindness of filial affection that
inclines me to suggest that the essential difference depends upon the
greater freedom of the more famous university.  Oxford makes a very
definite  effort to turn out a definite type of man and even his ingrained
sense that he is not as other men operates finally as a limitation.  At
Cambridge the ambitions and aspirations of any given undergraduate are much
less clearly cut and are of wider scope than those of his equivalent on the
Isis.  It seems to me no mere accident that Cambridge was able to tolerate
Milton, Byron, Tennyson and myself without turning a hair, while Oxford
inevitably excreted Shelly and Swinburne.  "Per contra," seh suited Walter
Pater and Oscar Wilde perfectly.  Had they been at Cambridge, the nonsense
would have been knocked out of them.  They would have had to succeed or
fail entirely on their own virtues; whereas, as things were, the Oxford
atmosphere and the Oxford manner shielded them from the rude blasts of all-
round criticism.
     These ideas receive some support from the consideration of the
relations normally obtaining between undergraduates and dons.  On the
Granta we are no doubt "in statu puillari;" the Oxonian is "in statu quo"
"pupillari."  He is taught, trained and, if necessary, trounced, to respect
the principle of authority.  It is really fair to say that no Cambridge man
would ever dream

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of adducing authority in the course of an argument.  He might indeed bring
forward a great name on his side, but never without being ready to support
it with the heavy artillery of patent proof.  No fame is fixed with us as
it is with them.  The spirit of criticism never sleeps.
     We see accordingly much stricter discipline with them than with us. We
tend to trust the good sense and good will of the fluffiest fresher.  Our
dons never get nervous lest a rag should go too far, and we never betrayed
their trust, at least not till quite recently.  Since my time the tone of
both universities has been lowered.  Before 1900 a rag capable of scaring
the women students would have been unthinkable.
     Tyranny  always trembles, and I remember only too well the wave of
sympathy which swept through Cambridge at the news that the Oxford
authorities, panic-stricken at some projected demonstration, had actually
imported mounted police from London.  Our own dons would have cut their
throats rather than do anything so disgraceful; but if they had, we should
have pounded those police into pulp.
     This particular contrast is manifest to both universities.  Whenever
the subject comes up, anecdote answers anecdote to the point.  The
psychology extends to the individual.  Our conception of the ideal proctor
is very different to theirs.  I my second year one proctor effected some
capture by watching his victim from the darkness of a doorway.  The story
want round and within a week dishonour met its due.  The dirty dog was
ducked in the Cam.  Nor were the avengers sent down.  On the contrary, the
proctor was obliged to burn his bands.  Such conduct was practically
unprecedented.
     The typical tale is this.  The grounds of Downing College are
surrounded by a long low wall.  One dark windy night a passing proctor saw
his cap, caught by a gust, soar gracefully over the rampart. His bulldogs
climbed the wall and retrieved it.  But the cap was not their only prize.
They dragged with them a most discomfited undergraduate, and a companion
who was open to criticism from the point of view of the university
regulations.  But the proctor simply thanked the man for bringing back his
cap and apologized for disturbing him.  He refused to take advantage of an
accident.
     One very instructive incident concerns that brilliant Shakespeare
scholar and lecturer Louis Umfraville Wilkinson.  One summer night he came
into college at Oxford a little lively with liquor.  His with had made the
evening memorable and he went on to his rooms without curbing his
conversation, which happened to deal with the defects of the dean in
various directions.  Fortune favoured him --- I balance the books in
perspective! --- the dean's window was open and the reprobate heard to his
horror that one at least of his flock failed to estimate his eminence at
the same exalted rate as he did himself.  He actually brought a formal
charge of blasphemy against Wilkinson, pressed it to the utmost and
succeeded in getting him sent down.

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     Wilkinson shrugged his shoulders, came over to us and entered his name
at John's.  Now comes an infamy almost incredible.  The dean pursued his
revenge.  He wrote a long, bitter, violent letter to Wilkinson's tutor,
giving an account of the affair at Oxford, and urging --- in such language
that it was more like a command than a threat --- that Wilkinson be
forthwith kicked out of Cambridge.  The tutor sent for the offender and the
following dialogue ensued:
     "I believe you know Mr. So-and-So, Mr. Wilkinson."
     "I have that honour, sir."
     "Dean of Blank, Oxford, I understand."
     "That is so, sir."
     "I have a letter from him, which I propose to read to you."
     "Thank you, sir."
     The tutor read through the letter, made no comment, asked no
questions.  He tore it slowly in pieces and threw them into the fire.
     "May I hope that you will be with us at breakfast tomorrow?"
     "Thank you, sir."
     "Good morning, Mr. Wilkinson."
     "Good morning, sir."
     I confess that it seems to me that the method of Oxford in such
matters errs in two different directions.  On the one hand, the
undergraduate is treated as an irresponsible infant, to be dragooned into
decency; and on the other, punished with a sternness which postulates that
he is as accountable for his actions as a fully adult man, with
comprehensive knowledge of the ways of the world.  The result is to hinder
his development, by withholding experience from him, and at the same time
to punish his inexperience by making a mere mistake ruinous.  The system
tends to atrophy his ethical development by insisting on a narrow and
inelastic code, while encouraging moral cowardice and unfitting him to face
the facts which so presumptuously force themselves into notice as soon as
the college conventions are done with.
     Cambridge realizes that (within very wide limits) the more experience
a man has, the better is he equipped to make his way in the world.  We
think it wiser to let men find out for themselves what dangers lie ahead,
and pay the penalty for imprudence while recovery is comparatively easy.
Better learn how to fall before the bones become brittle.
     Another advantage of our idea of the relationship between long gowns
and short is that, even if at the cost of some superficial respect, it is
possible to establish more intimate communion in a spirit of comradeship
between the old and the young. The intellectual gain is obvious; but
perhaps even more valuable is the moral profit.  To draw a hard and fast
line between pupil and teacher limits both.  Misunderstanding leads to
mistrust, mistrust to enmity.  It is better to realize the identity of
interests.

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     I became aware of my feeling on this point quite suddenly.  The
impression is the more intense.  One night there had been a regular rag.  I
forget what about, but we built a big bonfire in the middle of the market
place and otherwise spread ourselves.  Things began with no definite pulse
of passion discernible, but as the evening advanced, we found ourselves
somehow or other at odds with the townees.  I think we must have resented
their attempt to participate in the general gaiety.  Sporadic free fights
sprang up here and there, but nothing really serious.  On the whole we gave
and took in good temper.  Just before twelve o'clock I turned to go home.
Just beyond the tobacconist's -- Bacon, celebrated by Calverley in his
overrated ode --- swirled a swarm of townees shouting an swearing in a way
that struck me as ugly.  It was no affair of mine and I did not want to be
late.  But even as I changed my course to avoid the mob I saw that their
game was to reinforce half a dozen roughs who were surrounding a doorway
and hustling one of the proctors.  My immediate impulse was to gloat upon
the evil that had befallen my natural enemy, for until that moment my
absurd shyness had prevented me from realizing my relations with the
authorities.  I had timidly accepted the conventional chaff, but now almost
before that first thought was formulated my inmost instincts sprang into
consciousness.  I shouted to the few scattered gownsmen that were still in
the square and hurled myself headlong to the rescue of my detested tyrant.
He was pretty well under the weather, warding off feebly the brutal blows
that the cowardly cads rained on his face.  His cap was gone and his gown
was in shreds.  His bulldogs had been handled still more roughly.  I
suppose the townees saw them as traitors to the cause, hirelings of the
aristocracy.  They had been knocked clean down and were being battered by
the boots of the mob.  We must have been about a dozen, not more, and we
had to fight off forty.  It was the first time that I had ever had to face
the animal anger, unreasoned and uncontrolled, of a mass of men whose
individual intelligences, such as they were, had been for the moment
completely swamped by the savage instinct to stamp on anything that seemed
to them sensitive.
     Fate familiarized me with this psychology in another form. It breaks
out every time any man speaks or acts so as to awaken the frantic fear
which is inherent in all but the rarest individuals, that anything new is a
monstrous menace.  For the first time I observed the extraordinary fact
that in such situations one's time sense runs at two very different rates.
The part of one's mind that is concerned with one's actions races riotously
with their rhythm.  Another part stands aloof, observing, analysing,
imperturbable; a train of thought which might, in normal circumstances,
occupy an hour reduced to a few minutes, and seeming slow at that.
     The roughs were, to all intents and purposes, insane.  The neither
knew nor cared whether they ended by murder.  And yet I have no idea why we

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mastered them easily enough.  We had neither arms nor discipline.  We were
younger, certainly weaker, man for man, and we lacked the force which fury
lends to its victims.  I found myself puzzling it out and the only
conclusion was that, whatever science may say, there is such a thing as
moral superiority, a spiritual strength independent of material or
calculable conditions.
     The fight went of for twenty minutes or so and ended queerly enough.
The mob thinned out, melted away at its outskirts, and the front rank men
became aware of the fact simultaneously without any more reason than had
marked their entire proceedings.  They took to their heels and ran like
rabbits.
     I was half-past twelve before I got home.  I took a tub and found I
was black and blue.  Of course my breach of the rule about midnight was
duly reported.  I was halled and explained why I had been late.  The
proctor whom we had conveyed to Christ's had not taken our names and I have
no reason to think that he knew me.  But my tutor asked no questions.  He
took my story for true; in fact, he treated me simply as another gentleman.
That could not have happened at Oxford.
















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                              20




     Nothing gives such a mean idea of the intelligence of mankind than
that it should ever have accepted for a moment the imbecile illusion of
"free will"; for there can be very few men indeed, in any generation, who
have at any time in their lives sufficient apparent liberty of action to
induce them to dally with it.  Of these few, I was one.  When I left
Cambridge, I had acquired no particular ties.  I was already the Spirit of
Solitude in in embryo.  Practically, too, my father having been the younger
son of a younger son, I had not even a territorial bond.  On the other
hand, I had a large fortune entirely at my own disposal; there was no
external constraint upon me to do one thing rather than another.  And yet,
of course, my career was absolutely determined.  The events of my life up
to that point, it they had been intelligently interpreted, would have
afforded ample indications of the future.  I was white-hot on three points;
climbing, poetry and Magick.
     On my return from Switzerland in 1898, I had nowhere in particular to
go.  There was no reason why I should settle down in any special place.  I
simply took a room in the Cecil, at that remote period a first-class
hostelry, and busied myself with writing on the one hand and following up
the magical clues on the other.  "Japhthah," and most of the other poems
which appear in that volume, were written about this period.  It is a kind
of backwater in my life.  I seem to have been marking time.  For this
reason, no doubt, I was the more ready to be swept away by the first
definite current.  It was not long before it caught me.
     I had a number of conversations with Julian Baker, who kept his
promise to introduce me to "a man who was a much greater Magician than he
was himself".  This was a Welshman, named George Cecil Jones.  He possessed
a fiery but unstable temper, was the son of a suicide, and bore a striking
resemblance to many conventional representations of Jesus Christ.  His
spirit was both ardent and subtle.  He was very widely read in Magick; and,
being by profession an analytical chemist, was able to investigate the
subject in a scientific spirit.  As soon as I found that he really
understood the matter I went down to Basingstoke, where he lived, and more
or less sat in his pocket.  It was not long before I found out exactly
where my destiny lay.  The majority of old magical rituals are either
purposely unintelligible or actually puerile nonsense1.  Those which are
straightforward and workable

{172}


        1  Some are doubtless survivals of various forms of nature
          religion;but the majority are adaptations of Catholic or Jewish
          traditions to the ambitions, cupidities, envies, jealousies and
          animal instincts of the most ignorant and primitive type of
          peasant.














are, as a rule, better adapted to the ambitions of love-sick agricultural
labourers than those of educated people with a serious purpose.  But there
is one startling exception to this rule.  It is "The Book of the Sacred"
"Magick of Abra-Melin the Mage."
     This book is written in an exalted style.  It is perfectly coherent;
it does not demand fantastic minutiae of ritual or even the calculations
customary.  There is nothing to insult the intelligence.  On the contrary,
the operation proposed is of sublime simplicity.  The method is in entire
accordance with this.  There are, it is true, certain prescriptions to be
observed, but these really amount to little more than injunctions to
observe decency in the performance of so august an operation.  One must
have a house where proper precautions against disturbance can be taken;
this being arranged, there is really nothing to do but to aspire with
increasing fervour and concentration, for six months, towards the obtaining
of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.  Once He has
appeared, it is then necessary, first, to call forth the Four Great Princes
of the Evil of the World; next, their eight sub-princes; and, lastly, the
three hundred and sixteen servitors of these.  A number of talismans,
previously prepared, are thus charged with the power of these spirits.  By
applying the proper talismans, you can get practically anything you want.
     It cannot be denied that the majesty and philosophical
irreproachability of the book are sensibly diminished by the addition of
these things to the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel.  I should have
preferred it without them.  There is, however, a reason.  Anyone who
reaches a new world must conform with all the conditions of it.  It is
true, of course, that the hierarchy of evil appears somewhat repugnant to
science.  It is in fact very hard to explain that we mean by saying that we
invoke Paimon; but, to go a little deeper, the same remark applies to Mr.
Smith next door.  We do not know who Mr. Smith is, or what is his place in
nature, or how to account for him.  We cannot even be sure that he exists.
Yet, in practice, we call Smith by that name and he comes.  Buy the proper
means, we can induce him to do for us those things which are consonant with
his nature and powers.  The whole question is, therefore, one of practice;
and by this standard we find that there is no particular reason for
quarrelling with the conventional nomenclature.
     At this time I had not worked out any such apology for the theories of
transcendentalism.  I took everything as it came and submitted it to the
test of experience.  As it happened, I had no reason at any time to doubt
the reality of the magical universe.  I began my practical work with astral
visions and found to my surprise that after half a dozen experiments I was
better than my teacher.
     In these days I took my Magick very much "au pied de la lettre."  I
knew, of

{173}





















course, that Magick had fallen into desuetude chiefly because people would
follow the prescribed course of action and get no result.
     An exquisitely amusing incident bearing on this point is as follows:
Gerald Kelly, Ivor Back and one or two other ardent spirits, inspired by my
success, decided to do Magick themselves.  They hired and furnished a room
at Cambridge for the purpose and proceeded to evoke various spirits.
Nothing happened.  At last one of the greatly daring extended his little
finger outside the circle.  He was not "slain or paralysed as if blasted by
the lightning flash" and thence concluded that Magick was all rubbish.  I
offer this example to logic to the Museum of Human Imbecility, in the
principal city of the Astral Plane.
     I understood perfectly well that Back and Kelly, having no capacity
for Magick, were bound to fail either to evoke a spirit or to get
themselves blasted.  If one does not understand anything about electricity,
one cannot construct a dynamo; and having so failed, one cannot get oneself
electrocuted.
     But I suppose that their failure and my success was mostly a matter of
personal genius, just as Burns with hardly any literary apparatus could
write poetry, and Tennyson, with any amount, could not.
     My success itself helped to blind me to the nature of the conditions
of achievement.  It never occurred to me that the problem of Magick
contained metaphysical elements.
     Consider my performance one evening at Eastbourne.  Having waited for
the lowest possible tide so as to be as remote as might be from the
bandstand, I made a circle and built an altar of stones by the edge of the
sea.  I burned my incense, performed my evolutions and made heaven hideous
with my enchantments.  All this in order to invoke the Undines.  I hoped,
and more or less expected, to have one come out of the foam and attach
herself to my person.  I had as yet no notion that this programme might be
accomplished far more easily.
     There are thus two main types of mistake; one in spirit and one in
technique.  Most aspirants to Magick commit both.  I soon learned that the
physical conditions of a magical phenomenon were like those of any other;
but even when this misunderstanding is removed, success depends upon one's
ability to awaken the creative genius which is the inalienable heirloom of
every son of man, but which few indeed are able to assimilate to their
conscious existence, or even, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, to
detect.
     The only Undine that appeared was a policeman, who approached near
enough to observe a fantastically garbed figure, dancing and howling in the
moonlight "on the silvery, silvery, silvery sands"; howling, whistling,
bellowing and braying forth the barbarous names of evocation which have in
the sacred rites a power ineffable, around a furiously flaming bonfire
whose sparks were whirled by the wind all over the beach.
     The basis of the delusion is that there is a real apodeictic
correlation between the various elements of the operation, such as the
formal manifestation of the spirit, his name and sigil, the form of the
temple, weapons, gestures and incantations.  These facts prevent one from
suspecting the real subtlety involved in the hypothesis.  This is so
profound that it seems almost true to say that even the crudest Magick
eludes consciousness altogether, so that when one is able to do it, one
does it without conscious comprehension, very much as one makes a good
stroke at cricket or billiards.  One cannot give an intellectual
explanation of the rough working involved, as one can explain the steps in
the solution of a quadratic equation.  In other words Magick in this sense
is rather an art than a science.
     Jones realized at once that I had a tremendous natural capacity for
Magick, and my every action proved that I intended to devote myself to it
"without keeping back the least imaginable thing".  He suggested that I






should join the Body of which he was an adept; known, to a few of the more
enlightened seekers, ass the Hermetic Order of the G.'. D.'..  A short
account of this Order is necessary.  Most of the facts concerning it are
given here and there in "The Equinox;" but the story is so lengthy and
complex that it would require a volume 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 initiation
and the true attribution of the Tarot Trumps.  This attribution had been
sought vainly for centuries.  It cleared up a host of @abbalistic
difficulties, in the same was as Einstein's admirers claim that his
equations have done in mathematics and physics.  The manuscript gave the
name and address of an adept Sapiens Dominabitur Astris, a Fr„lein
Sprengel, living in Germany, with an invitation to write to her if further
knowledge was required.  Dr. Westcott wrote; and S.D.A. gave him and his
two colleagues a charter authorizing them to establish an Order in England.
This was done.  Soon after, S.D.A. died.  In reply to a letter addressed to
her, came an intimation from one of her colleagues that they had never
approved her policy in permitting open-temple work in England, but had
refrained from active opposition from personal respect for her.  The writer
ended by saying that England must expect no more assistance from Germany;
enough knowledge had been granted to enable any English adept to form a
Magical Link with the Secret Chiefs.  Such competence would evidently
establish a right to renewed relations.

{175}




































     Dr. Woodman had died and Mathers forced Dr. Westcott to retire from
active leadership of the Order.  Mathers, however, was not trusted.  He,
therefore, announced to the most advanced adepts that he had himself made
the Magical Link with the Secret Chiefs; and, at an interview with three of
them in the Bois de Boulogne, had been confirmed in the supreme and sole
authority as the Visible Head of the Order.  The adepts entrusted with this
information were required to sign a pledge of personal obedience to Mathers
as a condition of advancement in the Order.  Nevertheless, dissatisfaction
continued.  The advancement did not arrive.  They suspected that Mathers
had no more knowledge to give; and he retorted that, however that might be,
he wasn't going to waste it on such hopeless differs.  Both positions have
much to recommend them to discriminating sympathy.
     These petty squabbles apart, a big thing had happened.  Mathers had
discovered the manuscript of "Abra-Melin" in the library of the Arsenal in
Paris and begun to translate it1.  He found himself harassed and opposed on
all sides.  In those days there was practically no public way of getting
about Paris at all.  Mathers lived at Auteuil, a long way from the Arsenal,
and met with so many bicycle accidents that he was driven to go on foot.
(There is always occult opposition to the publication of important
documents.  It took me over three years to get my "The Goetia" through the
press, and over two years in the case of "777."  This is one of the facts
whose cumulative effect makes it impossible to doubt the existence of
spiritual forces.)  Other misfortunes of every kind overwhelmed Mathers.
He was an expert Magician and had become accustomed to use the Greater Key
of Solomon with excellent effect.  He did not realize that "Abra-Melin" was
an altogether bigger proposition.  It was like a man, accustomed to handle
gunpowder, suddenly supplied with dynamite without being aware of the
difference.  He worried through and got "Abra-Melin" published; but he
perished in the process.  He became the prey of the malignant forces of the
book, lost his integrity and was cast out of the Order of which he had been
the visible head.
     This debacle had not yet taken place at the time of my first
initiation, November 18th, 1898.
     I took the Order with absolute seriousness.  I was not even put off by
the fact of its ceremonies taking place at Mark Mason's Hall.  I remember
asking Baker whether people often died during the ceremony.  I had no idea
that it was a flat formality and that the members were for the most part
muddled middle-class mediocrities.  I saw myself entering the Hidden Church
of the Holy Grail.  This state of my soul served me well.  My initiation
was in fact a sacrament.
     The rituals have been printed in "The Equinox," vol. I, Nos. II and III.
There is no question that those of neophyte and adept are the genuine
rituals of initiation, for they contain the true formulae.  The proof is
that they can be

{176}
        1  WEH Note:  At least that's what Mathers said.  According to
          G.Sholem in his "Kabbalah", English and Hebrew versions have been
          found in British collections known to have been consulted by
          Mathers.  It is conjectured that Mathers faked the translation of
          the Old French version from the library of the Arsenal to obtain
          translator's remuneration from the eventual publisher.  Mathers
          did the same thing with the "Greater Key of Solomon" and an excerpt
          from the "Lesser Key of Solomon," called "The Goetia" and
          subsequently published by Crowley.  Mathers plagiarized the whole
          of his famous introduction to "The Kabbalah Unveiled" from
          Christian D. Ginsburg's essay "The Kabbalah; Its Doctrines,"
          "Development and Literature".  These practices appear to be endemic
          to the time.









































































made to work by those who understand and know how to apply them.  Shallow
critics argue that because the average untrained man cannot evoke a spirit,
the ritual which purports to enable him to do so must be at fault.  He does
not reflect that an electroscope would be useless in the hands of a savage.
Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the
sciences and arts.  There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension,
judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.  It is above all
needful for the student to be armed with scientific knowledge, sympathetic
apprehension and common sense.  My training in mathematics and chemistry
supplied me with the first of these qualities; my poetic affinities and
wide reading with the second; while, for the third, I suppose I have to
thank my practical ancestors.
     Being thus able to appreciate the inmost intention of my initiation, I
was able to stand the shock of the events immediately subsequent.  I was
introduced to an abject assemblage of nonentities; the members of the Order
were as vulgar and commonplace as any other set of average people.  Jones
and Baker themselves were the only members with any semblance of scientific
education, until, a few months later,  I met Allan Bennett, a mind pure,
piercing and profound beyond any other in my experience.  There was one
literary light, W. B. Yeats, a lank dishevelled demonologist who might have
taken more pains with his personal appearance without incurring the
reproach of dandyism; and one charming and intelligent woman, Mrs. Emery,
for whom I always felt an affectionate respect tempered by a feeling of
compassion that her abilities were so inferior to her aspirations.  The
rest of the Order possessed no individuality; they were utterly
undistinguished either for energy or capacity.  There is not one of them
today who has made any mark in the world.
     At my initiation, I could have believed that these adepts deliberately
masked their majesty; but there was no mistaking the character of the
"knowledge lecture" in which I had to be examined to entitle me to pass to
the next grade.  I had been most solemnly sworn to inviolable secrecy.  The
slightest breach of my oath meant that I should incur "a deadly and hostile
current of will, set in motion by the Greatly Honoured Chiefs of the Second
order, by the which I should fall slain or paralysed, as if blasted by the
lightning flash".  And now I was entrusted with some of these devastating
though priceless secrets.  They consisted of the Hebrew alphabet, the names
of the planets with their attribution to the days of the week, and the ten
Sephiroth of the Cabbala.  I had known it all for months; and, obviously,
any schoolboy in the lower fourth could memorize the whole lecture in
twenty-four hours.
     I see today that my intellectual snobbery was shallow and stupid.  It
is vitally necessary to drill the aspirant in the groundwork.  He must be

{177}






















absolutely familiar with the terminology and theory of Magick from a
strictly intellectual standpoint.  I still think, however, that this course
of study should precede initiation and that it should not be mixed up with
it.  Consider the analogy of poetry.  One could, to a certain extent, teach
a man to write poetry, by offering to his soul a set of spiritual and
emotional experiences, but his technique must be based on the study of
grammar and so on, which have no essential relation with art.
     Talking over these matters with Jones and Baker, I found them quite in
sympathy with my pint of view; but they insisted, rightly enough, that I
was not in a position to judge the circumstances.  I must first reach the
Second Order.
     Accordingly, I took the grade of Zelator 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 among men Allan
Bennett.  The fame of this man as a Magician was already immense.  He was
esteemed second only to Mathers himself; and was, perhaps, even more
feared.
     After the ceremony we went into the outer room to unrobe.  I was
secretly anxious to be introduced to this formidable Chief.  To my
amazement he came straight to me, looked into my eyes, and said in
penetrating and, as it seemed, almost menacing tones: "Little Brother, you
have been meddling with the Goetia!"  (Goetia means "howling"; but it is
the technical word employed to cover all the operations of that Magick
which deals with gross, malignant or unenlightened forces.)  I told him,
rather timidly, that I had not been doing anything of the sort.  "In that
case," he returned, "the Goetia has been meddling with you."  The
conversation went no further.  I returned home in a somewhat chastened
spirit; and, having found out where Iehi Aour lived, I determined to call
on him the following day.
     I should have explained that, on deciding to join the Order, I had
taken a flat at 67 and 69 Chancery Lane1.  I had already determined to
perform the Operation of "Abra-Melin," but Jones had advised me to go through
my

{178}


        1  My innocence after three years at Cambridge may be gaged by my
          conduct in the matter of choosing a residence.  I understood it
          as a fixed principle of prudence, "When in a difficulty consult
          your lawyer."  Knowing nothing, whatever about renting
          apartments, I was in a difficulty.  I therefore consulted my
          lawyer and too the first place he suggested.  He, of course,
          never gave a though to my convenience or the appropriateness of
          the district.  He saw and took the chance of obliging a business
          acquaintance.














initiation first.  However, I began to busy myself with the preparations.
"Abra-Melin" warns us that our families will object strenuously to our
undertaking the Operation.  I resolved, therefore, to cut myself off
absolutely from mine.  So, as I had to live in London, I took the flat
under the name of Count Vladimir Svareff.  As Jones remarked later, a wiser
man would have called himself Smith.  But I was still obsessed with
romanticism, while my summer in St. Petersburg had made me in love with
Russia.  There was another motive behind this --- a legitimate one.  I
wanted to increase my knowledge of mankind.  I knew how people treated a
young man from Cambridge.  I had thoroughly appreciated the servility of
tradesmen, though I was too generous and too ignorant to realize the extent
of their dishonesty and rapacity.  Now I wanted to see how people would
behave to a Russian nobleman.  I must say here that I have repeatedly used
this method of disguise --- it has been amazingly useful in multiplying my
points of view about humanity.  Even the most broad-minded people are
necessarily narrow in this one respect.  They may know how all sorts of
people treat them, but they cannot know, except at second hand, how those
same people treat others.
     To return to Allan Bennett.  I found him staying with V. H. Frater
Aequo Animo1 in a tiny tenement in Southwark or Lambeth --- I forget which.
It was a mean, grim horror.  AE. A., whose name was Charles Rosher, was a
widely travelled Jack-of-all-trades.  He had invented a patent water-closet
and been court painter to the Sultan of Morocco.  He wrote some of the
worst poetry I have ever read.  He was a jolly-all-round sportsman with an
excellent heart and the cheery courage which comes from knocking about the
world, and being knocked about by it.  If his talents had been less varied,
he might have made a success of almost anything.












{179}


        1  I ultimately conjectured: Equi Animo: "with the soul of a
          horse".

























                              21



     Allan Bennett was four years older than myself.  His father, an
engineer, had died when 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 he
would gradually convalesce until, after a few weeks of freedom, the spasms
would begin once more and he would be forced to renew the cycle of drugs1.
     No doubt, this constant suffering affected his attitude to life.  He
revolted against being an animal; he regarded the pleasures of living (and
above all, those of physical love) as diabolical illusions devised by the
enemy of mankind in order to trick souls into accepting the curse of
existence.  I cannot forbear quoting one most remarkable incident.  When he
was about sixteen, the conversation in the laboratory where he was working
turned upon childbirth.  What he heard disgusted him.  He became furiously
angry and said that children were brought to earth by angels.  The other
students laughed at him and tried in vain to convince him.  He maintained
their theory to be a bestial blasphemy.  The next day one of the boys
turned up with an illustrated manual of obstetrics.  He could no longer
doubt the facts.  But his reaction was this: "Did the Omnipotent God whom
he had been taught to worship devise so revolting and degrading a method of
perpetuating the species?  Then this God must be a devil, delighting in
loathsomeness."  To him the existence of God was disproved from that
moment.
     He had, however, already some experience of an unseen world.  As a
little boy, having overheard some gossip among superstitious servants, he
had gone into the back garden and invoked the devil by reciting the Lord's
Prayer backwards.  Something happened which frightened him.
     Having now rejected Catholicism, he took up Magick and at once
attained extraordinary success.  He used to carry a "lustre" --- a long
glass prism with a neck and a pointed knob such as adorned old-fashioned
chandeliers.  He used this as a wand.  One day, a party of theosophists
were chatting sceptically about the power of the "blasting rod".  Allan
promptly produced his and blasted one of them.  It took fourteen hours to
restore the incredulous individual to the use of his mind and his muscles.

        1  WEH Note:  The modern reader should not be too much disturbed by
          this catalogue of patently illegal drugs.  They were all legal
          until well into the 20th century.  This approach to asthma was
          still followed in the last quarter of the 20th century, with
          various dangerous medications prescribed in rotation by
          physicians for the patient to the point of sequential toxic
          reaction.  Crowley himself became afflicted with the disorder,
          almost "the Magician's disease" for its frequency among those who
          follow this interest.  Crowley's doctor prescribed heroin at a
          time in the 'teens when it was thought to be non-addictive!
          Crowley experienced the terrors of withdrawal, recounted in his
"          "Liber XCIII", and ultimately died of respiratory infection in
          1947, fifty years after the events described here.






{180}


































































     Allan Bennett was tall, but his sickness had already produced a stoop.
His head, crowned with a shock of wild black hair, was intensely noble; the
brows, both wide and lofty, overhung indomitable piercing eyes.  The face
would have been handsome had it not been for the haggardness and pallour
due to his almost continuous suffering.
    Despite his ill-health, he was a tremendous worker.  His knowledge of
science, especially electricity, was vast, accurate and profound.  In
addition, he had studied the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, not only as a
scholar, but with the insight that comes from inborn sympathetic
understanding.
     I did not fully realize the colossal stature of that sacred spirit;
but I was instantly aware that this man could teach me more in a month than
anyone else in five years.  He was living in great discomfort and penury.
I offered him the hospitality of my flat.  I have always felt that since
the occult sciences nourish so many charlatans, it should be one's prime
point of honour not to make money in any way connected with them1.  The
amateur status above all!  Hospitality is, however, always allowable.  But
I was careful never to go beyond the strict letter of the word.
     Iehi Aour came to stay with me and under his tuition I made rapid
progress.  He showed me where to get knowledge, how to criticize it and how
to apply it.  We also worked together at ceremonial Magick; evoking
spirits, consecrating talismans, and so on.
     I must relate one episode, as throwing light upon my magical
accomplishments and my ethical standards.  Jones and I had come to the
conclusion that Allan would die unless he went to live in a warmer climate.
However, he was penniless and we would not finance him for the reasons
given above.  Instead, Jones and I evoked to visible appearance the spirit
Buer, of "The Goetia," whose function is to heal the sick.  We were partially
successful; a helmeted head and the left leg being distinctly solid, though
the rest of the figure was cloudy and vague.  But the operation was in fact
a success in the following manner.  It is instructive to narrate this as
showing the indirect and natural means by which the will attains its
object.
     I am constrained to a seeming digression.  Many authors insist on the
importance of absolute chastity in the aspirant.  For some months I had
been disregarding this injunction with a seductive siren whose husband was
a colonel in India.  Little by little I overcame my passion for her and we
parted.  She wrote to me frequently and tried to shake my resolution, but I
stood firm.  Shortly after the evocation of Buer, she wrote, begging me to
call at her hotel.  I cannot remember how it came into my mind to to what I
did, but I went to see her.  She begged me to come back to her and offered
to do anything I wanted.  I said to her, "You're making a mess of your life
by your selfishness.  I will give you a chance to do an absolutely
unfettered act.  Give me a hundred pounds, I won't tell you whom it's for,
except that it's

{181}


        1  WEH Note:  Notwithstanding this and a more extreme diatribe
          against "Black Magic" in his "Magick in Theory and Practice",
          Crowley did accept remuneration for doing Astrological charts at
          a later period than this writing.  In other instances he did
          dedicate his income from mystical and magical writings to the
          support of his O.T.O. and not his personal needs.











not for myself.  I have private reasons for not using my own money in this
matter.  If you give me this, it must be without hoping or expecting
anything in return."  She gave me the money --- it paid Allan's passage to
Ceylon and saved to humanity one of the most valuable lives of our
generation.
     So much for Buer.  As for the lady, she came to see me some time later
and I saw that I was myself acting selfishly in setting my spiritual
welfare above her happiness.  She had made a generous gesture; I could do
no less.  She agreed not to stand in the way of my performing the Operation
of "Abra-Melin," but begged me to give her a living memory of our love.  I
agreed and the sequel will be told in its place.
     During this time, magical phenomena were of constant occurrence.  I
had two temples in my flat; one white, the walls being lined with six huge
mirrors, each six feet by eight; the other black1, a mere cupboard, in
which stood an altar supported by the figure of a Negro standing on his
hands.  The presiding genius of this place was a human skeleton, which I
fed from time to time with blood, small birds and the like.  The idea was
to give it life, but I never got further than causing the bones to become
covered with a viscous slime2.  In "The Equinox," vol. I, no. 1 is a story,
"At the Fork of the Roads", which is in every detail a true account of one
episode of this period.  Will Bute is W. B, Yeats3, Hypatia Gay is Althoea
Gyles, the publisher is Leonard Smithers.
     The demons connected with "Abra-Melin" do not wait to be evoked; they
come unsought.  One night Jones and I went out to dinner.  I noticed on
leaving the white temple that the latch of its Yale lock had not caught.
Accordingly, I pulled the door to and tested it.  As we went out, we
noticed semi-solid shadows on the stairs; the whole atmosphere was
vibrating with the forces which we had been using.  (We were trying to
condense them into sensible images.)  When we came back, nothing had been
disturbed in the flat; but the temple door was wide open, the furniture
disarranged and some of the symbols flung about in the room.  We restored
order and then observed that semi-materialized beings were marching around
the main room in almost unending procession.
     When I finally left the flat for Scotland, it was found that the
mirrors were too big to take out except by way of the black temple.  This
had, or course, been completely dismantled before the workmen arrived.  But
the atmosphere remained and two of them were put out of action for several
hours.  It was almost a weekly experience, by the way, to hear of casual
callers fainting or being seized with dizziness, cramp or apoplexy on the
stair case.  It was a long time before those rooms were re-let.  People
felt

{182}


        1  Iehi Aour never had anything to do with this; and I but little:
          the object of establishing it was probably to satisfy my instinct
          about equilibrium.
        2  WEH Note:  In an action Crowley brought for libel in 1934, he
          testified under oath on the particulars of this set of temples;
          see "The Magical Link", Sept./Oct. 1988, a members' publication of
          O.T.O., for an excerpt of the trial transcript.
             On the point of feeding skeletons, mine likes beer.  Crowley
          had an aversion to beer and probably never tried it.  I just pore
          a little on a fossil dinosaur bone at her feet now and then, and
          she firms up nicely.  They also like jewelry.
        3  The identification is conjectural, depending solely on the
          admissions of Miss Gyles.








instinctively the presence of something uncanny.  Similarly, later on, when
I gave up my rooms in Victoria Street, a pushing charlatan thought to
better himself by taking them.  With this object he went to see them.  A
few seconds later he was leaping headlong down the five flights of stairs,
screaming in terror.  He had just sufficient genuine sensitiveness to feel
the forces, without possessing the knowledge, courage and will required to
turn them to account, or even to endure their impact.






























































                              22




     Apart from my daily work, my chief preoccupation was to prepare for
the Operation of the Sacred Magick.
     The first essential is a house in a more or less secluded situation.
There should be a door opening to the north from the room of which you make
your oratory.  Outside this door, you construct a terrace covered with fine
river sand.  This ends in a "lodge" where the spirits may congregate.  It
would appear the simplest thing in the world for a man with forty thousand
pounds, who is ready to spend every penny of 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
begin at Easter.
     The house is a long low building.  I set apart the south-western half
for my work.  The largest room has a bow window and here I made my door and
constructed the terrace and lodge.  In side the room I set up my oratory
proper.  This was a wooden structure, lined in part with the big mirrors
which I brought from London.
     On first arriving at Boleskine, I innocently frightened some excellent
people by my habit of taking long walks over the moors.  One morning I
found a large stone jar at my front door.  It was not an infernal machine;
it was illicit whisky --- a mute, yet eloquent appeal, not to give away
illicit stills that I might happen to stumble across in my rambles.  I
needed no bribe.  I am a free trader in every sense of the word.  I have no
sympathy with any regulations which interfere with the natural activities
of human beings.  I believe that they aggravate whatever trouble they are
intended to prevent; and they create the greatest plague of humanity,
officialdom, and encourage underhand conduct on both sides, furtiveness and
espionage.  Any law which tends to destroy manly qualities is a bad law,
however necessary it may seem on the surface.  The tendency of most modern
legislation is to bind Gulliver with packthread.  I have never broken the
law myself, because the things I happen to want are so utterly different
from those desired by men in general, that no occasion has ever risen.

{184}




















     But I observe with regret that humanity is being compelled to turn its
attention from its proper business by having to comply with innumerable
petty formalities.
     Salmon fishing on Loch Ness should be remembered by people who are
praying for "those in peril on the deep".  It is a dull year when nobody is
drowned.  The lock is large enough to get up a regular sea; and the hills
are so arranged that the wind can come down in all sorts of unsuspected
ways.  The most violent storms often arise without five minutes' warning.
In addition, there is one section of the loch (north-east of Boleskine, on
the same side) where the shore for some two miles is a rocky precipice just
too high above the water to be climbable, even if one could get a footing.
     It is useless fishing in settled fine weather; one wants it overcast,
neither too hot nor too cold, neither windy nor quite calm --- unsettled
weather, in a word.  One morning I got into a salmon which subsequently
turned the scale at forty-four pounds.  He was terrifically game and really
much too heavy for my tackle.  Again and again he ran out the line and we
only held him by rowing for all we were worth in his direction.  It was
nearly two hours before we got him into the boat.
     The excitement over, I observed that a sleet was driving heavily and
that the loch was white with foam.  Also that we were off a lee shore, and
that shore about the middle of the precipice.  We could do nothing but pull
for life in the teeth of the gale, which increased in violence every
moment.  We were both already tired out.  Despite every effort, we were
forced, foot by foot, towards the rocks.  By great luck, there is one gap
in those infernal little cliffs.  But the boat was not under control.
However, we had to risk it and managed to get ashore without being smashed,
to beach the boat and walk home.  That was the worst of it.
     But I was often caught on the wrong side of the loch.  So near and yet
so fat!  There was the house a mile away and there was I with thirty miles
to make to get there.  I have never heard of the steamers being wrecked,
but that is perhaps because they are wrecks already.
     I took Lady Etheldreda to Scotland with me.  I have had many dogs in
my time; but she was "sui generis."  I had trained her to follow me on the
mountains and she was not only an admirable rock climber but an uncannily
prophetic tracker.  For instance, I would leave her at the foot of a
precipice beyond her powers and, after a climb, descend another precipice
to another valley, often in mists so thick that I could not see ten years
in any direction.  But I would invariably find her at the foot of the rocks
after making a detour of perhaps ten miles across unknown country.
     These qualities had their defects.  She became an amateur of sheep.
It was straightforward sport.  She never mangled a sheep, she killed it
neatly with a single bite and went off to the next.  She had no illusions
about the ethics

{185}





















of her proceedings and she brought superlative cunning into service.  She
never touched a sheep within ten miles of Boleskine; she never visited the
same district twice running; she was even at pains to prepare an alibi.  Of
course, she was always careful to remove every trace of blood.  That was
elementary.  But she would sham sickness the morning after the kill and she
would bring various objects into her kennel, as if to say, "Well, if you
want to know who I have been passing the time, there you are!"  She also
realized that her extraordinary speed and endurance would help her to clear
herself.  On one occasion she killed not less than forty miles there and
back from Boleskine.  No one except her master, whom she trusted not to
give her away, could suspect that she had covered so much ground --- to say
nothing of the shikar itself --- in the course of the night.  She was
unsuspected for months --- even weeks of watching failed to identify her
and if she had not been such a magnificent animal she might have escaped
altogether.  But her size and beauty were unmistakable.  The evidence began
to be too strong to pooh-pooh and I had to send her back to London.
     Boleskine is in the winter an excellent centre of "ski-l„ufing".  There
is a little snow in the valley itself, but on the moors behind Strath
Errick are tracts of elevated country, extending for many miles.  The
slopes are for the most part gentle and I have found the snow in first-rate
condition as late a the end of March.
     On off days at Wastdale Head, it was one of our amusements to throw
the boomerang.  Eckenstein had long been interested in it and constructed
numerous new patterns, each with its own peculiar flight.  As luck would
have it, Walker of Trinity came to the dale.  He had earned a fellowship by
an essay on the mathematics of the boomerang.  The theoretical man and the
practical put their heads together; and we constructed some extraordinary
weapons.  One of them could be thrown half a mile, even by me, who cannot
throw a cricket ball fifty yards.  Another, instead of returning to the
thrower, went straight from the hand and undulated up and down like a
switchback, seven or eight times, before coming to the ground.  A third
shot out straight, skimming the ground for a hundred yards or so, stopped
as suddenly as if it had hit a wall, rose, spinning in the air to the
height of some fifty feet, whence it settled down in a slowly widening
spiral.  Obviously, these researches bore on the problem of flying.
Eckenstein and I, in fact, proposed to work at it.  The idea was that we
should cut an alley through the woods on that part of my property which
bordered Loch Ness.  We were to construct a chute and start down in on a
bicycle fitted with movable wings.  There was to be a steam launch on the
loch to pick up us at the end of the flight.  We were, in fact, proposing
to do what has now, in 1922, proved so successful.  But the scheme never
went further than the construction of the boathouse for the launch.  My
wanderings are to blame.

{186}





















     The harmless necessary cat sheds those epithets in the Highlands.  The
most domesticated tabby becomes intoxicated by the air of freedom (so one
hypothesis suggests) and begins to run wild.  It takes to the woods and
lives on rabbits and birds.  Its conscience tells it that it is violating
the game laws; man becomes its enemy.  It accordingly flees at one's
approach, though sometimes it becomes mad with fear and will attack a
stranger, unprovoked, and fight to the death.
     Much to my disgust, commercialism thrust its ugly head into my
neighbourhood.  The British Aluminium Company proposed to exploit the water
power of the valley above Foyers.  The Falls of Foyers are one of the few
natural glories of the British Isles; why not use them to turn an honest
penny?

          I sate upon the mossy promontory
          Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock,
          But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and glory,
          Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock
          To lure and lock
          Marvellous eddies in its wild caress;
          And there the solemn echoes caught the stress,
          The strain of that impassive tide,
          Shook it and flung it high and wide,
          Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar;
          All the mute mountains heard,
          Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred,
          And passed the word along, the signal of wide war.
          All earth took up the sound,
          And, being in one tune securely bound,
          Even a star became the soul of silence most profound.

          Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened,
          I sat and listened, if God's voice should break
          And pierce the hallow of my ear that hearkened,
          Lest God should speak and find me not awake ---
          For his own sake.
          No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate
          That enviable universal state.
          The sun and moon beheld, stood still.
          Only the spirit's axis, will,
          Considered its own soul an sought a deadlier deep,
          And in its monotone mood
          Of supreme solitude
          Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep;

{187}





















          But with calm eyes abode
          Patient, its leisure the galactic load,
          Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God.

Moneys-grubbing does its best to blaspheme and destroy nature.  It is
useless to oppose the baseness of humanity; if one touches pitch one runs
the risk of being defiled.  I am perfectly content to know that the
vileness of civilization is rapidly destroying itself; that it stinks in my
nostrils tells me that ti is rotting and my consolation is in the words of
Lord Dunsany.  In the meantime, the water was to be wasted in producing
wealth --- the most dangerous of narcotic drugs.  It creates a morbid
craving --- which it never satisfies after the first flush of intoxication.
     Now the furnaces of the British Aluminium company cost a great deal to
light.  It was, therefore, impossible to extinguish them every Saturday
evening.  The people of the neighbourhood learnt this fact with unfeigned
horror.  Such wickedness was inconceivable!  But besides that, it was sheer
madness.  Did not these people in Glasgow understand the God did not permit
such things to happen with impunity?  So on the first Saturday night the
people betook themselves to points of vantage on the surrounding hills in
order to see the works destroyed by the divine wrath.  No explanation has
ever been offered why it did not come off!
     The lady previously mentioned was now made happy as a result of the
fortnight we had spent together in Paris.  I therefore thought it my duty
to take care of her until the following spring.  The fulfilment of her
hopes would end my responsibility before the beginning of my Operation.
     I had asked Jones to come and stay with me during the sic months, in
view of the dangers and interference already experienced at the mere threat
to perform it.  It was obviously the part of prudence to have, if possible,
an initiated on the spot.  It is also very awkward for a man absorbed in
intense magical effort to have to communicate with the external world about
the business of everyday life.  Jones did not see his way to come, so I
asked Rosher, who consented.  But before he had been there a month he found
the strain intolerable.  I cam down to breakfast one morning; no Rosher.  I
asked the butler why he was absent.  The man replied, in surprise at my
ignorance, that Mr. Rosher had taken the early morning boat to Inverness.
There was no word of explanation; I never saw him or heard of him for many
years; and, when we met, though absolutely friendly and even intimate, we
never referred to the matter.
     One day I came back from shooting rabbits on the hill and found a
Catholic priest in my study.  He had come to tell me that my lodgekeeper, a
total abstainer for twenty years, had been raving drunk for three days and
had tried to kill his wife and children.

{188}






















     I got an old Cambridge acquaintance to take Rosher's place; but he too
began to show symptoms of panic fear.  Meanwhile, other storms were
brewing.  The members of the London temple, jealous of my rapid progress in
the Order, had refused to initiate me to the Second Order in London, though
the Chief himself had invited me.  He, therefore, asked me to come to
Paris, where he would himself confer the Grade.  I went; and, on my return,
ten days later, found that my prot‚g‚e had also taken fright, fled to
London and hidden herself.
     Besides these comparatively explicable effects on human minds, there
were numberless physical phenomena for which it is hard to account.  While
I was preparing the talismans, squares of vellum inscribed in Indian ink, a
task which I undertook in the sunniest room in the house, I had to use
artificial light even on the brightest days.  It was a darkness which might
almost be felt.  The lodge and terrace, moreover, soon became peopled with
shadowy shapes, sufficiently substantial, as a rule, to be almost opaque.
I say shapes; and yet the truth is that they were no shapes properly
speaking.  The phenomenon is hard to describe.  It was as if the faculty of
vision suffered some interference; as if the objects of vision were not
properly objects at all.  It was as if they belonged to an order of matter
which affected the sight without informing it.
     By the exercise of dour determination, I succeeded in getting
everything ready in good time to begin the work proper at Easter.  It is
unfortunate that in these days I had no idea of the value of a Magical
Record from the historical standpoint.  I find few dates, nor have I
troubled to set down even such startling occurrences as are related above.
I was dead set on attainment.  Anything which appeared to me out of the
direct road to the goal was merely a nuisance, a hindrance and a
distraction.  Apart from my memory, therefore, the chief sources of
information about my life at this period are poems, rituals and records of
visions.
     I was very busily at work with the muse.  Mr "Appeal to the American"
"Republic" was begotten of a pleasant journey with two Americans from Geneva
to Paris.  The poem is still popular, though from time to time one has to
change "The Lying "Russian" cloke his traitor head" to "Prussian", and so on.
"Carmen Saeculare" was actually the result of a more or less prophetic
vision.  Some of its forecasts have turned out wonderfully well, though the
century is yet young; others await fulfilment --- but I do not propose to
linger on merely to obtain so morbid a satisfaction!
     "The Fatal Force," written in the spring of 1899, possesses one feature
of remarkable interest.  The idea of the play is that a high priestess,
resenting the necessity of male co-operation in maternity, should marry her
own son and, subsequently, the son of that union, so as to produce an
individual who would be seven-eights herself; the advantage being that he
would thus inherit as

{189}




















much of her power and wisdom as possible.  I supposed this idea to be
original; but I discovered later that Eliphas L‚vi mentions this formula as
having been used by the ancient Magicians of Persia with this very
intention.  That was one of the facts which led me to the discovery that in
my last incarnation is was Eliphas L‚vi.
     "The Mother's Tragedy" seems to have been influenced by Ibsen, with a
touch of Bulwer Lytton.
     In "The Temple of the Holy Ghost," however, the reader may trace the
progress of my soul's development.  A few of the poems in this book are
comparatively normal.  One can see the extent of my debt to various
predecessors, especially Baudelaire.  But while there is a certain delight
in dalliance with demoniac Delilahs, there is a steady advance towards the
utmost spiritual purity.  In "The Athanor", the invocation of the Holy
Guardian Angel reveals my true aspirations; while in "The Mountain Christ",
"The Rosicrucian" and others, it is evident that my ambition was not to
become superior to the rest of mankind except in order that I  might redeem
them.
     I quote:

               The Oath of the Beginning.
               I, Perdurabo, Frater Ordinis Roase Rubeae et Aureae Crucis,
          a Lord of the Paths in the Portal of the Vault of the Adepts, a
          5ø = 6ø of the Order of the Golden Dawn; and an humble
          servant of the Christ of God; do this day spiritually bind myself
          anew:
                    By the Sword of Vengeance:
                    By the Powers of the elements:
                    By the Cross of Suffering:
               That I will devote myself to the Great Work: the obtaining
          of Communion with my own Higher and Divine Genius (called the
          Guardian Angel) by means of the prescribed course; and that I
          will use my Power so obtained unto the Redemption of the
          Universe.
               So help me the Lord of the Universe and mine own Higher
          Soul!

     This idea is further expanded in the obligation which I took in
respect of the Operation.  The influence of my initiation into the Second
Order is manifest.  While I remained in the Outer Order, I had not
definitely realized the fact that I was bound up with the welfare of
humanity and could only satisfy my aspiration by becoming a perfect
instrument for the regeneration of the world.  I quote once more:

               The obligation of the Operation.
               I, Perdurabo, in the Presence of the Lord of the Universe,
          and of all Powers Divine and Angelic, do spiritually bind myself,
          even as I am no physically bound unto the Cross of Suffering.
               (1) To unite my consciousness with the divine, as I may be
          permitted

{190}















          and aided by the gods Who live for ever, The Aeons of Infinite
          years; that, being lost in the Limitless Light, it may find
          Itself: to the Regeneration of the Race, either of man or as the
          Will of God shall be.  And I submit myself utterly to the Will
          Divine.
               (2) To follow out with courage, modesty, loving-kindness and
          perseverance the course prescribed by Abra-Melin the Mage; as far
          as in me lies, unto the attainment of this end.
               (3) To despise utterly the things and the opinions of this
          world lest they hinder me in doing this.
               (4) To use my powers only to the Spiritual well-being of all
          with whom I may be brought in contact.
               (5) To give no place to Evil: and to make eternal war
          against the Forces of Evil: until even they be redeemed unto the
          Light.
               (6) To harmonize my own spirit so that Equilibrium may lead
          me to the East; and that my Human consciousness shall allow no
          usurpation of its rule by the Automatic.
               (7) To conquer the temptations.
               (8) To banish the illusions.
               (9) To put my whole trust in the Only and Omnipotent Lord
          God: as it is written, "Blessed are they that put their trust in
          Him."
               (10) To uplift the Cross of Sacrifice and Suffering; and to
          cause my Light so to shine before men that they may glorify my
          Father which is in Heaven.
               Furthermore, I most solemnly promise and swear: to acquire
          this Holy Science in the manner prescribed in the Book of Abra-
          Melin, without omitting the least imaginable thing of its
          contents; not to gloss or comment in any way on that which may be
          or may not be, not to use this Sacred Science to offend the Great
          God, not to work ill unto my neighbour: to communicate it to no
          living person, unless by long practice and conversation I shall
          know him thoroughly, well examining whether such an one really
          intendeth to work for the Good or for the Evil.  I will
          punctually observe, in granting it, the same fashion which was
          used by Abra-Melin to Abraham.  Otherwise, let him who receiveth
          it draw no fruit therefrom.  I will keep myself as from a
          Scorpion from selling this Science.  Let this Science remain in
          me and in my generation as long as it shall please the Most High.
               As all these points I generally and severally swear to
          observe under the awful penalty of the displeasure of God, and of
          Him to whose Knowledge and Conversation I do most ardently
          aspire.
               So help me the Lord of the Universe, and my own Higher Soul1
          !

{191}


        1  Some of the above phrases are prescribed by Abra-Melin itself;
          others are adapted from my 5ø = 6ø documents.














     During this period I continued the practice of visions of and voyages
upon divers spiritual planes.  It seems worth while to record a few of
these.  They afford a clear indication of my progress at this time.

               In bed, I invoked the Fire angels and spirits on the tablet,
          with names, etc., and the 6th Key.  I then (as Harpocrates)
          entered my crystal.  An  angel, meeting me, told me, among other
          things, that they (of the tablets) were "at war with the angels of"
          "the 30 Aethyrs, to prevent the squaring of the circle."  I went
          with him unto the abodes of fire, but must have fallen asleep, or
          nearly so.  Anyhow, I regained consciousness in a very singular
          state, half consciousness being there, and half here.  I
          recovered and banished the Spirits, but was burning all over, and
          tossed restlessly about --- very sleepy, but consumed of Fire!
          Only repeated careful assumption of Harpocrates' god-form enabled
          me to regain my normal state.  I had a long dream of a woman
          eloping, whom I helped, and after, of a man stealing my Rose
          Cross jewel from a dressing-table in an hotel.  I caught him and
          found him a man weak beyond the natural (I could bend or flatten
          him at will)1, and then the dream seemed to lose coherence ... I
          carried him about and found a hairbrush to beat him, etc. etc.
          Query: Was I totally obsessed?
               Invoking the angels of Earth, I obtained wonderful effect.
          The angel, my guide, treated me with great contempt and was very
          rude and truthful.  He showed me divers things.  In the centre of
          the earth is formulated the Rose and Cross.  Now the Rose is the
          Absolute Self-Sacrifice, the merging of "all" in the 0 (Negative),
          the Universal Principle of generation through change ("not" merely
          the feminine), and the Universal light "Khabs".  The Cross is the
          Extension or Pekht principle.  Now I should have learned more;
          but my attention wandered.  This closes the four elemental
          visions: prosecuted, alas! with what weakness, fatuity and folly!
               I ... in the afternoon shut myself up and went on a journey
          ...
               I went with a very personal guide2: and beheld (after some
          lesser things) our Master as he sat by the Well with the Woman of
          Samaria.  Now the five husbands were five great religions which
          had defiled the purity of the Virgin of the World: and "he whom
          thou now hast" was materialism (or modern thought).
               Other scenes also I saw in His Life: and behold I also was
          crucified!  Now did I go backwards ion time even unto Berashith,
          the Beginning, and was permitted to see marvellous things.
               First the Abyss of the Water: on which I, even I, brooded
          amid other

{192}


        1  This incident was once quoted by one of my critics as
          illustrative of the absurdity of Magick --- as if Magick were
          responsible for the irrationality of dreams!
        2  This horrible phrase was not my own: I must not be judged by it.














          dusky flames as Shin upon Maim, held by my Genius.  And I beheld
          the victory of Rƒ upon Apophis and the First of the Golden Dawns!
          Yea: and monsters, faces half-formed, arose: but they subsisted
          not.
               And the firmament was.
               Again the Chaos and the Death!
               Then "Ath" Hashamain ve "ath" h-aretz1.  There is a whirling,
          intertwining infinitude of nebulae, many concentric systems, each
          system non-concentric to any other, yet "all" concentric to the
          whole.  As I went backwards in time they grew faster and faster,
          and less and less material.  (P.S. --- this is a scientific
          hypothesis, directly contrary to that of Anna Kingsford.)  And at
          last are whirling wheels of light; yet through them "waved" a
          thrill of an intenser invisible light in a direction
          perpendicular to the tangents.  I asked to go yet farther back;
          and behold!  I am floating on my back --- cast down: in a wind of
          Light flashing down upon me from the immeasurable Above.  (This
          Light is of a bluish silver tinge.)  And I saw hat Face, lost
          above me in the height inscrutable; a face of absolute beauty.
          And I saw as it were a Lamb slain in the Glamour of Those Eyes.
          Thus was I made pure; for there, what impurity could live?  I was
          told that not many had been so far back: none farther: those who
"          "could" go farther would not, since that would have reabsorbed them
          into the Beginning, and that must not be to him who hath sworn to
          uplift the Standard of Sacrifice and Sorrow, which is strength.
          (I forgot the Angels in the Planetary Whirl.  The regarded me
          with curiosity: and were totally unable to comprehend my
          explanation that I was a Man, returning in time to behold the
          Beginning of Things.)
               So I returned; having difficulty to find the earth.  But I
          called on S.R.M.D. and V.N.R., who were glad to see me; and
          returned into the body: to waste the night in gibing at a foolish
          medico.

     My actions continually testify that I naturally possessed what is
after all the most essential asset for a Magician, in singular perfection.
It came natural to me to despise and reject utterly, without a second's
hesitation or regret, anything soever that stood in the way of my purpose.
Equally, I could hold that purpose itself as nothing in comparison with the
greater purpose of the Order to which I was pledged.
     Early in 1900 I applied to the Second Order in London for the
documents to which my initiation in Paris entitled me.  They were refused
in terms which made it clear that the London body was in open revolt
against the Chief, though afraid to declare its intentions.  I went to
London and discussed the matter with Jones, Baker and Mrs. Emery.  Jones
saw clearly enough that if Mathers were not the head of the Order and the
trusted representative of the Secret Chiefs, there was no Order at all.
Baker's position was that

{193}


        1  WEH Note: This portion is a development of the Hebrew text of
          the first verse of Genesis.












Mathers was behaving badly; he was sick of the whole business.  Mrs. Emery,
the nominal representative of the Chief, was trying to find a diplomatic
solution.  Her attitude was most serious and earnest and she was greatly
distressed by her dilemma.  She had thought it best to resign quietly, but
received a reply of the most staggering character.  The letter is dated
February 16th, 1900, and I quote the last two paragraphs in full.

               Now, with regard to the Second Order, it would be with the
"          "very greatest regret" both from my personal regard for you, as
          well as from the Occult standpoint, that I should receive your
          Resignation as my Representative in the Second Order in London;
          but I cannot let you form a combination to make a schism therein
          with the idea of working secretly or avowedly under Sapere Aude
          under the mistaken impression that he received an Epitome of the
          School of the Second Order work from G. H. Soror, Sapiens
          Dominabitur Astros.  For this forces me to tell you plainly (and,
          understand me well, I can prove to the hilt every word which I
          here say and more, and were I confronted with S. A., I should say
          the same) though for the sake of the Order, and for the
          circumstance that it would mean so deadly a blow to S. A.'s
          reputation, I entreat you to keep this secret from the "Order," for
          the present, at least, though you are at perfect liberty to show
"          "him" this if you think fit, "after mature consideration."
               He has NEVER been at "any time" either in personal or written
          communication with the Secret Chiefs of the order, he having
"          "either himself forged" or "procured to be forged" the professed
          correspondence between him and them, and my tongue having been
          tied all these years by a Previous Oath of Secrecy to him,
          demanded by him, from me, before showing me what he had either
          done or caused to be done or both.  You must comprehend from what
          little I say here the "extreme gravity" of such a matter, and again
          I ask you, both for his sake, and that of the Order, not to force
          me to go further into the subject.

     This letter struck at the very heart of the moral basis of her
conduct.  It put her in the position of having initiated people, for years,
on false pretences.  She could not drop out and say no more about it.  The
matter had to be thrashed out.
     My own attitude was unhampered by any ethical considerations.  I had
seen a good deal of Mathers personally.  He was unquestionably a Magician
of extraordinary attainment.  He was a scholar and a gentleman.  He had
that habit of authority which inspires confidence because it never doubts
itself.  A man who makes such claims as he did cannot be judged by
conventional codes and canons.  Ordinary morality is only for ordinary
people.  For example, assume a Prime Minister who has private information
that somebody

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has discovered, and is cultivating, a new germ by means of which he intends
to destroy the nation.  To pass a "Short Act" would be to give the alarm
and precipitate the disaster.  It would be his duty to override the law and
put his foot upon the mischief.  Then again, the whole of Mathers' conduct
might have been in the nature of a test.  It might have been his way of
asking the adepts whether they had the power of concentrating on the
spiritual situation, of giving up for ever all their prejudices.
     Anyhow, as far as I was concerned, Mathers was my only link with the
Secret Chiefs to whom I was pledged.  I wrote to him offering to place
myself and my fortune unreservedly at his disposal; if that meant giving up
the Abra-Melin Operation for the present, all right.
     The result of this offer was recorded as follows:

               D.D.C.F. accepts my services, therefore do I rejoice that my
          sacrifice is accepted. Therefore do I again postpone the
          Operation of Abra-Melin the Mage, having by God's Grace
          formulated even in this a new link with the Higher and gained a
          new weapon against the Great Princes of the Evil of the World.
          Amen.

     I went to Paris, discussed the situation with Mathers and formulated
the following proposal for dealing with the refractory "temple".

          I. The Second Order to be summoned at various times during two or
          three days.  They to find, on being admitted one by one, a masked
          man in authority and a scribe.  These questions, etc. pass, after
          pledge of secrecy concerning interview.

               A. Are you convinced of the truth of the doctrines and
               knowledge received in the grade of 5ø = 6ø?  Yes or
               No?
                    If yes (1) Then their origin can spring from a pure
                    source only?
                    If no (2) I degrade you to be a Lord of the Paths in
                    the Portal in the Vault of the Adepts.
               B. If he reply "yes", the masked man continues: Are you
               satisfied with the logic of this statement?  Do you solemnly
               promise to cease these unseemly disputes as to the headship
               of this Order!  I for my part can assure you from my own
               knowledge that D.D.C.F. is really a 7ø = 4ø.
                    If yes (3) Then you will sing this paper; it contains a
                    solemn reaffirmation of your obligation as a 5ø =
                    6ø slightly expanded, and a pledge to support
                    heartily the new regulations.
                    If no (4) I expel you from this Order.

          II. The practice of masks is to be introduced.  Each member will
          know only the member who introduced him.

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               Severe tests of the candidate's moral excellence, courage,
          earnestness, humility, refusal to do wrong, to be inserted in the
          Portal or 5ø = 6ø ritual.
          III. Outer Order to be summoned.  Similar regulations to be
          announced to them.  New pledges required that they will not
          communicate the identity of anybody they happen to have known to
          any new member.
          IV. Vault to be reconsecrated.

     This was accepted, and I crossed to London to carry it out.  I find an
entry in my little book of Magical Rituals which reveals my state of mind.

          April 12th, 1900.
          I, Perdurabo, as the Temporary Envoy Plenipotentiary of Deo Duce
          Comite Ferro & thus the Third from the Secret Chiefs of the Order
          of the Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold, do deliberately invoke
          all laws, all powers Divine, demanding that I, even I, be chosen
          to do such a work as he has done, at all costs to myself.  And I
          record this holy aspiration in the presence of the Divine Light,
          that it may stand as my witness.
               In Saecula Saeculorum.  Amen!

     A further complication had suddenly arisen.  In Mathers' fatal letter
to Mrs. Emery, he wrote that Sapiens Dominabitur Astris was not dead after
all; but in Paris, working with him at that very moment.  But when I
arrived in Paris, Mathers had been rudely undeceived.  The woman who
claimed to be Sapiens had bolted, with such property of his as she could
lay hands on.  That such a man could have been so imposed upon seems
incredible.  But he told me that she certainly possessed knowledge which
only Sapiens had, and also that she had told him every detail of a very
private conversation which he had once had with Mme. Blavatsky at Denmark
Hill.  In the upshot, she proved to be one Mmme. Horos.  In the following
year she was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude for outrages on
young girls.  She had in some way used the rituals of the Order which she
had stolen from Mathers to entice them to their doom.
     My arrival in London as the envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary of
Mathers put the cat among the chickens.  My identity was very soon
discovered and a typhoon began to rage in the teacup.  The rebels resorted
to all sorts of lawless and violent acts, and spread the most stupidly
scandalous stories, not only about me, but about the few others who
remained loyal to Mathers.  They did not even scruple to slander a young
girl of perfect purity, by imputing to her an improper intimacy with me.
It was especially dastardly, as she was engaged to be married.  To this day
I cannot understand

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how people like W. B. Yeats should not have repressed such methods in the
sternest way and insisted that the fight be fought with fir weapons.  They
had seized the furniture of the temple and the vault.  I applied to a
police magistrate for tit to be handed over.  On the hearing of the summons
we were amazed to find Mr. Gill, K.C., one of the most famous men at the
bar, briefed to appear in a police court to squabble over a few pounds'
worth of paraphernalia!  The money was furnished by Miss. Horniman,
daughter of the Mazawattee tea man, and later of Manchester Theatre fame.
She had been expelled by Mathers some time previously.
     I knew enough of campaigning to decline joining battle against such
heavy artillery as Mr. Gill.  Luckily, the value of the property had been
sworn at a sum beyond the limit with which a police magistrate can deal.
The summons was therefore withdrawn and Mr. Gill kept his eloquence and his
fee to himself.  There was in reality nothing worth fighting for.  The
rebel camp broke up in anarchy.  They issued various hysterical manifestos,
distinguished by confusion of thought, inaccuracy of statement, personal
malice, empty bombast and ignorance of English.  One error is worth
rescuing from oblivion.  "Nothing in the above resolutions shall "ef"fect our
connection with the Rosicrucian order."  The poor darlings meant "af"fect.
     They went on squabbling amongst themselves for a few months and then
had the sense to give up playing at Magick.  Their only survivor is Arthur
Edward Waite, who still pretends to carry on the business, though he has
substituted a pompous, turgid rigmarole of bombastic platitudes for the
neophyte ritual, so that the last spark of interest is extinct for ever.
Mathers, of course, carried on; but he had fallen.  The Secret Chiefs cast
him off; he fell into deplorable abjection; even his scholarship deserted
him.  He published nothing new and lived in sodden intoxication till death
put and end to his long misery.  He was a great man in his way.  May he
have expiated his errors and resumed his labours, with the advantage of
experience!
     Summer was now at hand and the wanderlust reasserted itself in me.
There was no point in my going back to Boleskine till the following Easter.
As it happened, Mathers --- to whom I returned to report progress --- had
two guests, members of the Order.  They had just comeback from Mexico.  The
fancy took me to go there.  I wanted in particular to climb the great
volcanoes.  So, late in June 1900, I sailed for New York.







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                          P A R T   T W O


                      THE MYSTICAL ADVENTURE










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                              23



     I think it was on the sixth of July that I reached New York.  In those
days one was not bored by people who had never seen a real skyline boasting
of the outrage since perpetrated by the insects.  A mountain skyline is
nearly always noble and beautiful, being the result of natural forces
acting uniformly and in conformity with law.  Thus, though it is not
designed, it is the embodiment of the principles which are inherent in
design.  New York, on the other hand, has been thrown up by a series of
disconnected accidents.
     The vanity of the natives led them therefore to concentrate their
enthusiasm on a rejected statue of commerce intended for the Suez Canal.
This they had purchased at secondhand and grandiloquently labelled "Liberty
enlightening the World".  They had been prophetic enough to put it on an
island with its back to the mainland.
     But, in those days, the spirit of liberty was still intensely alive in
the United States.  The least sensitive visitor was bound to become aware
of it in a few hours.  There was no genteel servility.  Nobody interfered
with anyone else's business or permitted busybodies to meddle with his.
The people seemed prosperous and contented; they had not yet been forbidden
to amuse themselves when the day's work was over.
     Till this time I had never been in any reputedly hot country.  I was
appalled to find New York intolerable.  I filled a cold bath, and got in
and out of it at intervals till eleven at night, when I crawled, panting,
through the roasting streets and consumed ice-water, iced watermelon, ice-
cream and iced coffee.  "Good God," I said to myself, "and this is merely
New York!  What must Mexico be like!"  I supposed that I was experiencing
normal conditions, whereas in point of fact I had landed at the climax of a
heat wave which killed about a hundred people a day while it lasted.  I
should have discovered the truth if I had looked at a newspaper; but I did
not read them.  I had already learnt that even the finest mind is bound to
perish if it suffers the infection of journalism.  It is not merely that
one defiles the mind by inflicting upon it slipshod and inaccurate English,
shallow, commonplace, vulgar, hasty and prejudiced thought, and deliberate
dissipation.  Apart from these positive pollutions, there is the negative
effect.  To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth
while.  The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who
demand a continuous effort of intelligence.  The first discipline of
education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with
canned chatter.

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     People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is
going on.  In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide.  Most
of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later.  Even when there
is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case,
be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an
importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa.  No
event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.
     I only stayed in New York two or three days and then travelled direct
to Mexico City.  It was my first experience of a really long journey by
train.  The psychology is very curious.  Journeys of more than half an hour
begin to be tedious.  Edinburgh to Inverness: I used to feel on the verge
of insanity before I had got half way.  But after two or three days in the
train one becomes acclimatized.
     The city of Mexico began by irritating me intensely.  The hotel had no
organized service; they didn't seem to care whether one got anything to eat
or not.  In fact, in the whole city, there was only one restaurant where
one could get anything outside the regular local dishes.  Nobody bothers
about eating.  The same applies to drinking, as far as the palate is
concerned.  People ate to satisfy hunger and drank to get drunk.  There
were no fine vintages; the principal drinks were pulque, which is the
fermented sap of the aloe; mescal, tequila and aguardiente; the last being
a general term applicable to any distilled spirit.  In those days I was
practically an abstainer, and as I had a fastidious daintiness which made
me dislike trying experiments, I never even sampled any of these drinks.
     It is a very curious trait.  I used to refuse, sometimes under
embarrassing pressure, to taste things whose appearance or whose name
displeased me.  I would not eat jam, even as a child, because it looked
messy.  I must have been nearly forty before I would touch salad.  It seems
absurd.  I was very bond of lobster mayonnaise; but lobster salad, never!
I dislike the combination of consonants.  The word suggests something
indefinite.  It gives the effect of French poetry, where the absence of
accentuation emasculates the rhythm.
     I found myself spiritually at home with Mexicans.  The despise
industry and commerce.  They had Diaz to do their political thinking for
them and damned well he did it.  Their hearts are set on bull fighting,
cock fighting, gambling and lechery.  Their spirit is brave and buoyant; it
had not been poisoned by hypocrisy and the struggle for life.
     I hired part of a house overlooking the Alameda, a magnificent park
intended for pleasure and protected from the police.  I engaged a young
Indian girl to look after me and settled down to steady work at Magick.  I
had an introduction to an old man named Don Jesus Medina, a descendant of
the great duke of Armada fame, and one of the highest chiefs of Scottish

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rite free-masonry.  My Cabbalistic knowledge being already profound by
current standards, he thought me worthy of the highest initiation in his
power to confer; special powers were obtained in view of my limited
sojourn, and I was pushed rapidly through and admitted to the thirty-third
and last degree before I left the country.
     I had also a certain amount of latitude granted by Mathers to initiate
suitable people "in partibus."  I, therefore, established an entirely new
Order of my own, called L.I.L.: the "Lamp of the Invisible Light".  Don
Jesus became its first High Priest.  In the Order L.I.L., the letters
L.P.D. are the monograms of the mysteries.  An explanation of these letter
is given by Dumas in the prologue of his "Memoirs of a Physician," and
Eliphas L‚vi discusses them at some length.  I, however, remembered them
directly from my incarnation as Cagliostro.  It would be improper to
communicate their significance to the profane, but I may say that the
political interpretation given by Dumas is superficial, and the ethical
suggestions of L‚vi puerile and perverse; or, more correctly, intentionally
misleading.  They conceal a number of magical formulae of minor importance
by major practical value, and the curious should conduct such research as
they feel impelled to make in the light of the Cabbala.  Their numerical
values, Yetziratic attributions, and the arcana of the Atus of Tahuti,
supply an adequate clue to such intelligences as are enlightened by
sympathy and sincerity.
     The general idea was to have an ever-burning lamp in a temple
furnished with talismans appropriate to the elemental, planetary and
zodiacal forces of nature.  Daily invocations were to be performed with the
object of making the light itself a consecrated centre or focus of
spiritual energy.  This light would then radiate and automatically
enlighten such minds as were ready to receive it.
     Even today, the experiment seems to me interesting and the conception
sublime.  I am rather sorry that I lost touch with don Jesus; I should like
very much to know how it turned out.
     I devoted practically my whole time to this and other magical work.  I
devised a Ritual of Self-Initiation (see "The Equinox", vol. I, no. III,
p.269), the essential feature of which is the working up of spiritual
enthusiasm by means of a magical dance.  This dance contained the secret
gestures of my grade, combined with the corresponding words.  I used to set
my will against the tendency to giddiness and thus postpone as long as
possible the final physical intoxication.  In this way I lost consciousness
at a moment when I was wholly absorbed in aspiration.  Thus, instead of
falling into dull darkness, I emerged into a lucid state, in which I was
purged of personality and all sensory or intellectual impressions.  I
became the vehicle of the divine forces invoked and so experienced Godhead.
My results were satisfactory so far as they went; but they did not aid my
personal progress very much,

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since I had not formulated an intellectual link between the divine and
human consciousness.
     I worked also at acquiring the power of invisibility.  (See "The"
"Equinox," vol. I, No. III, mp. 272 for the ritual.)  I reached a point when
my physical reflection in a mirror became faint and flickering.  It gave
very much the effect of the interrupted images of the cinematograph in its
early days.  But the real secret of invisibility is not concerned with the
laws of optics at all; the trick is to prevent people noticing you when
they would normally do so.  In this I was quite successful.  For example, I
was able to take a walk in the street in a golden crown and a scarlet robe
without attracting attention.
     Most interesting of all, perhaps, is a magical practice which I
devised, ostensibly to deal with the dilemma propounded by the Sphinx: "The
postulant to Magic must be morally perfect."  It may be that I felt
instinctively that my pious predecessors were wrong in demanding the
suppression of manhood and imposing arbitrary codes of conduct. (I know
now, of course, that their instructions have been misunderstood; every
element in one's molecule must be developed to the utmost and applied to
the service of one's true will.)  I suppose I have to thank Stevenson for
the idea, which was this.  As a member of the Second Order, I wore a
certain jewelled ornament of gold upon my heart.  I arranged that when I
had it on, I was to permit no thought, word or action, save such as
pertained directly to my magical aspirations.  When I took it off I was, on
the contrary, to permit no such things; I was to be utterly uninitiate.  It
was like Jekyll and Hyde, but with the two personalities balanced and
complete in themselves.  I found this practice of very great service.  It
was in fact essentially a beginning of systematic control of thought.  The
method is now incorporated in the instructions of the A.'. A.'. (See
"Liber Jugorum.")
     Mexico proved a glorious galloping ground for my Pegasus.  The
magnificent mountain air, the splendour of the sun, the flamboyant beauty
of the flowers, the intoxicating intimacy of leaping, fearless love which
flamed in every face made my mind a racing rhythm of rapture.
     Yet my principal achievement had its roots in Europe.  At one of
Mathers' semi-public ceremonies, I had met a member of the Order, an
American prima donna.  She took me by storm and we became engaged.  The
marriage could not take place immediately, as she had to get rid of some
husband that she had left lying about in Texas.  But I heard her sing Venus
in "Tannh„user" at Covent Garden; and she courteously insisted on my sampling
the goods with which she proposed to endow me.  The romance of an intrigue
with so famous an artist excited my imagination.  One afternoon, in Mexico,
I picked up a woman who attracted me by the insatiable intensity of passion
that blazed from her evil inscrutable eyes and tortured her worn face into
a whirlpool of seductive sin.  I passes some hours with her in her slum;

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and, walking home, found myself still so unappeased --- "lassatus, sed non"
"satiatus" --- that my fever developed a delirium whose images assumed the
form of Wagner's opera.  I went home and sat down at once to write my own
poetical and magical version of the story.  I  neither slept nor ate till
it was finished --- sixty-seven hours later.  I had not been aware of the
flight of time.  I could not understand why it was afternoon; I thought
that I had merely written all night.  This play marks the climax of the
first period of my poetry.
     During the summer I wanted to travel in the interior.  I went down to
Iguala, bought an orange pony and rode slowly back to the city, taking
things as they came.  In all my travels I have hardly ever "seen the
sights".  Nothing is so disappointing.  My plan is simply to live in any
new city the ordinary life of the people.  I wander about and presently
come unexpectedly upon one of the wonders of the world.  In this way one
gets the thrill which those who have sold their souls to Baedeker miss.
Imagine the delight of discovering the Coliseum or the Taj Mahal for
oneself, at a moment, perhaps, when one's mind was preoccupied with
commonplace ideas!  I may have missed a few masterpieces, but not many; and
people who go to see them on purpose miss them all altogether.
     The maximum of romance and pleasure is to be found in Mexico, even in
the quite small provincial towns.  There is always some sort of Alameda, a
well-wooded square more or less in the middle of the town with seats in any
number, and a bandstand where a band plays every night without any swank,
because people like music.  It is never too hot; there is usually a
pleasant breeze, enough to stir the leaves and not enough to disturb and
annoy.  It is full of men and women; all seem young and all are charming,
spontaneous and ready to make any desired kind of love.
     In fact, they are making it continually in their hearts and only wait
opportunity to suit the word and action to the thought.  Nor does
opportunity lag.  There are no practical difficulties.  Indoors and out
nature and art combine to invite Cupid to pay every kind of visit,
passionate, permanent, transitory, trivial.  The caprice of the moment is
the sole arbiter of the event.  The idea of worry is unknown.  "Take no
thought for the morrow" is the first principle of human relations,
especially in regard to all such matters.  Love is the business of life,
but it is all profit and no loss.  There is no false shame, no
contamination by ideas of commerce and material matters in general.  There
is no humbug about purity, uplift, idealism, or any such nonsense.  I
cannot hope to express the exquisite pleasure of freedom.  One's
spontaneity was not destroyed by anticipations of all sorts of difficulty
in finding a friend of any desired type, obstacles in the way of
consummating the impulse, and unpleasantness in the aftermath.  The problem
of sex, which has reduced Anglo-Saxon nations to hysteria and insanity, has
been

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solved in Mexico by the co-operation of climate and cordiality.  Even
Catholicism has lost most of its malignancy in Mexico.  Clergy and laity
unite, spiritually and somatically, with gay ardour.  The Virgin is here
actually the "fille-mŠre" which the gospels really represent, for all our
blustering denial of the obvious facts.  Of course, the priest likes a
little gratification for his complaisance, but that is a very human trait,
and as he is neither greedy, malicious, nor hypocritical, the charity which
he enjoys is given freely in the friendliest spirit.
     This was because he had Diaz 33ø to keep him in order.  After Diaz's
death, the priest got gay on a bellyful of --- (the Host?) like the world-
famous Sparrow and had to be curbed seriously, as history relates.
     My fist night out of Iguala was a mysterious delight.  I had lost my
way in a sugar plantation and it was getting dark when I came to a railway
in course of construction.  I followed this, hoping to find a town, but
night fell, sudden and black; so I tethered my horse and lay down to sleep
in my poncho by the light of a fire, to make which I borrowed some loose
material left by the engineers.  Dawn was just breaking when I was awakened
from sleep by that subtle sense of danger which protects sleeping
wayfarers.  In the dim light I saw three heads peering at me over the
embankment.  I fired my revolver in the air; the heads disappeared; I
turned over and went to sleep again instantly for several hours.
     My second night was otherwise amusing.  I struck a pioneer camp, where
a wooden hut had been thrown together.  Two Chinamen were running an eating
house.  I sat down to dinner with two of the engineers.  They spotted the
new chum and began to scare me with tales of scorpions and fever.  Before
serving dinner, one of the Chinese came in with a saucepan of boiling water
and went round the room tipping it into the cavities formed by the crossing
of the timbers of the hut.  As often as not, a scalded scorpion fell out.
I went to bet that night with my mind full of a particularly unpleasant
trick of my reptilian brothers.  They have a habit of dropping from the
roof on to one's bed.  This is quite without malice, but one stirs in one's
sleep at the touch.  The are alarmed and strike.  This didn't happen; but
in the morning I found my legs so swollen from mosquito bites that I could
not get my boots one.  The result was my first acquaintance with malaria,
which attacked me very severely shortly after I got back to the city.  My
ride was full of very varied adventure.  The incident that stands out is
this:
     Crossing a hillside, I saw a Mexican some thirty yards below the
track, apparently asleep in the sun.  I thought I would warn him of his
danger and rode over.  He must have been dead three weeks, for he had been
completely mummified.  Neither the coyotes nor the turkey-buzzards will
touch a dead Mexican.  His flesh has been too thoroughly impregnated with
chillies and other pungent condiments.  The make short work of any other
meat.  I

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remember riding out from Zapotlan to lunch with some friends on their
ranch.  I fell in with a string of mules bound for the Pacific coast.  As I
passed a mule dropped from exhaustion.  The men transferred his pack and
left him to die.  Returning after lunch, some three hours later, I found
the bones of the mule picked clean and dry.
     One can always tell a Mexican by his peculiar habit of blowing through
his cigarette before lighting it.  The reason for this is that the
government cigarettes are rolled by convicts, who are allowed what they
consider an inadequate amount of tobacco daily for their own use.  They
therefore increase their supply by mixing dust with the tobacco handed out
to them every morning for their work, and one therefore has to blow it out.
     It is said, I know not how truly, that a Mexican town, in a corner
near the Rio Grande, was, in the course of the revolution and counter-
revolution of the contending vultures in 1917, cut off for a time from all
communication with the rest of the country.  Presumably everyone buried
whatever cash he happened to have.  At least it vanished rapidly and
strangely.  The city gasped.  What the devil was to be done?  Being folk of
sense, they soon collected their wits and said: "All right.  It's no good
crying for the moon.  We've got to go on exchanging wealth.  We'll simply
barter on credit and strike a weekly balance.

          "If anyone fancies he's got a soft thing ---
           If we haven't got pesos we've plenty of string."

The result was surprising.  Business went on pretty well as in the past,
with this remarkable difference: the motive for cheating and hording and
gambling was gone.  One could, of course, amass a fortune on the balance
sheet of the town council; but it would be hard to cash in.  So nobody
troubled to outwit his neighbour or plot his ruin.  They contented
themselves with aiming at comfort and ease.  Old enemies became fast
friends; the usurers turned their hands to productive purposes; the loafers
and spongers and gamblers realized that they must work or starve.  The
whole town prospered; poverty disappeared; financial anxiety ceased to
exist; the moral tone of the community became almost angelic.  Everyone had
plenty to do, plenty to eat, plenty of leisure and plenty of pleasure.
Everyone was happy.  Of course it was too good to last.  Communications
were restored and a month later society had relapsed into a dog-fight for
dollars.

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                              24



     Lying sick in the Hotel Iturbide, I was attended by an American doctor
named Parsons, which whom I stuck up a warm friendship.  He was certainly a
"live wire".  The faculty had just devised as new source of income by
inventing appendicitis.  Parsons heard of this and wired to the States for
a partner who could perform the operation.  He then proceeded to advise
immediate operation every time one of his many wealthy patients had a
stomach-ache.  At a thousand Mexican dollars a time, it did not take many
months to pile up a fortune.
     The English colony in Mexico City was disliked and despised.  The
consul was habitually constipated and the vice-consul habitually drunk.  It
is a curious fact that all over the world these qualities never vary.  A
wide field is open the philosophical speculation.
     I came to frequent the American colony and club.  I remember being
introduced to a new but already popular and respected member, "Meet Mr.
Tewkesbury," and, a loud whisper, "Thorne," you know, who got away from Chi
with a quarter of a million plunks."  At this club I met some really
charming ranchers, who invited me to stay with them and convalesce.  Their
place was near Guanajato, a great centre for silver mines.  Guanajato
possessed an unique curiosity: some eccentric millionaire had built a
theatre, sparing no expense to make it the most gorgeous building of its
kind in the world.  The stalls, for instance, were upholstered in real
velvet, embroidered with real gold thread.  For some reason, I think
because the President had declined to open it, the owner felt himself
insulted and kept it shut up.  It was never opened at all except as a show
place for visitors like myself, and finally was somehow burnt to the
ground.
     Mexico City was full of American professional gamblers and confidence
men.  I saw a good deal of two of these; a lank grey Yankee named McKee and
his genial jackal Wilson, or some such name.  After a few days'
acquaintance Wilson approached me with the following proposal.  It appeared
that the manager of a mine near St. Luis Potosi had stolen a quantity of
gold dust.  He had got scared and dared not bolt.  Wilson thought that if
we offered him a thousand dollars, each putting up half, he would be
willing to hand over the compromising sacks, value five thousand or so.
Not for nothing had I read the works of "Pitcher of The Pink 'Un", and
other authorities on the gentle art of parting a fool and his money.  I
joyfully accepted Wilson's proposal.  "Bring your five hundred right
along," I said, "and I'll go and put

{208}



















the job through.  I know you're too busy to leave the city."  He agreed and
returned an hour later, not with the cash, but with his partner.  They
apologized profusely for mistaking me for a mug.  "Look here," said McKee,
"the innocence of your face is a fortune.  I know a rich man here who is
crazy on gambling.  You shall rook him at Brazilian poker.  (In this game
one backs one's hand as in ordinary poker, but the hands are of two cards
with the option of taking a third, as in baccarat.)  We'll signal you what
he holds.  With your face, he'll never get wise to the stunt."
     The psychology of these people really interested me.  They had no
experience of the kind of man who knows all the tricks but refuses to
cheat.  Their world was composed entirely of sharps and flats.  It is the
typical American conception; the use of knowledge is to get ahead of the
other fellow, and the question of fairness depends on the chance of
detection.  We see this even in amateur sport.  The one idea is to win.
Knowledge for its own sake, pleasure for its own sake, seem to the American
mere frivolity, "Life is real, life is earnest."  One of themselves told me
recently that the American ideal is attainment, while that of Europe is
enjoyment.  There is much truth in this, and the reason is that in Europe
we have already attained everything, and discovered that nothing is worth
while.  Unless we live in the present, we do not live at all.
    Mexico was foul of gambling houses and I used to play a great deal.
The chief game was Monte, in which the dealer exposes two cards; the punter
can back which he pleases; bets being placed, the dealer skins the pack,
and the first card with duplicates one of the two exposed cards wins for
it.  The bank's percentage is that if the first card skinned decides (is
"in the door", as they say), it only pays three quarters of the stake.
     The son of one of the prominent members of the old Golden Dawn went to
the bad and became a professional crook.  Him I once frequented to study
the psychology of hawk and pigeon.
     First let me insist that the nave is always a fool. Prosperity is a
function of biological success and (facts being facts) the habit of lying
begets credulity.  My friend never profited except now and then for a few
lucky weeks, though he scooped in that time enough to keep a man with a
grain of good sense for the rest of his life.
     The confidence trick is protean, but in all its forms the essence is
to get the victim off his guard.  Observe how this fact confirms by general
theory that surrender of the will to the guidance of the emotions is
destructive of judgment.  The first act in every trick is what is called
the "come on" or the "build up".  Its crudest form is providing to a
stranger that you trust him by asking him to go away for five minutes with
your watch and money.  From this has been developed an amazing structure of
subtle strategy.  The shrewest bankers have been looted for tens of
thousands.  The general plan

{209}





















is to bring about, in an apparently natural way, a series of incidents in
which the chief of the confederates shows to advantage.  His victim is
induced to admire his keen sense of humour, his generosity, fairness,
integrity, and so on in various emergencies.  When the swindler fees sure
that his victim trusts him implicitly, he proceeds to the next act.  A
scheme is suggested by which they shall both make a fortune, and in one of
a million ways a situation is brought about in which it is hard for the
victim to avoid putting up his cash.  He could hardly show suspicion, even
if he felt it, without giving outrageous offence for which he could produce
no excuse.  His common decency is concerned and at the same time a strong
appeal made to his interests.  He produces the goods --- and hears no more
of the matter.
     I could give the details of half a hundred schemes of this sort.
Their ingenuity extorts my intellectual admiration, and yet there is always
a fundamental flaw that, in the hands of such men, a million melts more
quickly than a thousand would with anyone else.  In every swell bar and
hotel one can see plenty such --- all well dressed and well groomed,
laughing and joking, and throwing their money about, and all the time
ninety per cent feel a sinking in the pit of the stomach as the thought
hammers persistently at the back of their brains, "How shall I pay my
bill?" at the best; and, overshadowing lesser worries, "What about when my
luck turns?"  "When will my own confidence in the imbecility of my fellow
men be enlightened by their robbing me of the stake I risked, my liberty?"
     A delicious ride by electric tram from the city beings one to
Tacubaya, a luxurious pleasure resort with a big casino.  The play is at
long tables stacked with thousands of silver dollars.  One night I noticed
the electric chandelier beginning to swing.  Crashing sounds came from
without.  Suddenly the lights went out!  It was an earthquake.  Attendants
rushed in with lighted candles.  It could hardy have been dark for two
minutes; the room was almost empty and most of the cash had vanished.
     I had been playing a modified martingale with happier results than my
stupidity deserved.  But, one night, luck ran against me and my stake had
increased to the limit allowed by the house.  There was a slight delay ---
I think someone had called for a fresh pack of cards --- I found myself
walking nervously up and down.  Somewhat as had happened in the chess
congress at Berlin, I had a vision of myself from somewhere outside.  "Look
at that young fool," I seemed to be saying; "that stake he has there is
about a month's income."  The cards were dealt.  I had won, but "in the
door", so that I only got seventy-five per cent.  I picked up my winnings,
walked out and have never gambled again; except once at Monte Carlo for the
fun of the thing, some years later.  I made it a rule to take five pounds
to the casino and quit, when it was gone, for the day.  As luck would have
it, on the fourth day I kept on winning.  I had an appointment for lunch.
Remembering this, I

{210}




















suddenly awoke to the fact that I had won over three hundred an fifty
pounds.  That was good enough for me.  After lunch I packed up and escaped
to Nice, with a vow never again to set foot in the principality.
     All this time I had not forgotten my project of climbing the mountains
of Mexico.  Somehow, my Indian girl knew that I was keen on them; and one
day she called me up to the roof of the house and pointed out two snow-
capped peaks.  As I have already said, my judgment of heights and distances
was surprisingly accurate.  Mexico being about seven thousand feet above
the sea, I judged these peaks to be from eleven to twelve thousand, and
their distance from the city some eight to ten miles.  I proposed to myself
to stroll out and climb them one day.  "From theirsummits," I said to
myself, "I may be able to see the big mountains eighty miles away."  The
scheme miscarried.  I was looking at the big mountains themselves!  I had
made no allowance for the clearness of the air.  People whose experience is
confined to Europe have no means of judging correctly.  As I found later,
the Himalayas are to Mexican peaks as these are to the Alps.  In north
India one sees a mountain apparently within a day's march, yet four days
later that mountain will hardly have changed its apparent size and
distance.
     I do not know why I made no attempts on the peaks.  Perhaps it was
from an obscure feeling of comradeship.  I preferred to wait till
Eckenstein joined me, which he was to do towards the end of the year.









{211}





































                              25




     Meanwhile my magical condition was making me curiously uncomfortable.
I was succeeding beyond all my expectations.  In the dry pure air of
Mexico, with its spiritual energy unexhausted and uncontaminated as it is
in cities, it was astonishingly easy to produce satisfactory results.  But
my very success somehow disheartened me.  I was getting what I thought I
wanted and the attainment itself taught me that I wanted something entirely
different.  What that might be it did not say.  My distress became acute;
and, as I had done at the beginning, I sent out an urgent call for help
from the Masters.  It must have been heard at once, for little over a
fortnight later I got a long letter from Fra. V.N.  Though I had not
written to him, he gave me the very word that I needed.  It restore my
courage and my confidence.  I continued my work with deeper and truer
understanding.  I began to perceive the real implications of what I was
doing.  In particular, I gained an entirely new grip of the Cabbala.
     One of my results demands detailed record, because it proved later to
be one of the foundations of the Great Work of my life.  The word
Abracadabra is familiar to everyone.  Why should it possess such a
reputation?  Eliphas L‚vi's explanations left me cold.  I began to suspect
that it must be a corruption of some true "word of power".  I investigated
it by means of the Cabbala.  I restored its true spelling.  Analysis showed
it to be indeed the essential formula of the Great Work.  It showed who to
unite the Macrocosm with the Microcosm.  I, therefore, adopted this word
and its numerical value, 418, as the quintessentialized expression of the
proper way to conduct all major Magical Operations.
     This discovery was only one of many.  Before Allan Bennett left for
Ceylon, he gave me most of his magical notebooks.  One of these contained
the beginnings of a Cabbalistic dictionary in which various sacred words
were entered, not alphabetically, but according to their numerical value.
I must explain that the fundamental idea of the Cabbala is that the
universe may be regarded as an elaboration of the numbers from 0 to 10,
arranged in a certain geometrical design and connected by twenty-two
"paths".1  The problem is to acquire perfect comprehension of the essential
nature of these numbers.  Every phenomenon, every idea, may be referred to
one or more numbers.  Each is thus, so to say, a particular modification of
the pure idea.  Sacred words which add up to any number should be eloquent
commentaries on one of its aspects.  Thus the number 13 proves to be, as it
were, an essay

{212}


        1  WEH Note:  This refers to the "Tree of Life", a method of
          literary criticism which has generalized itself to become a map
          of human consciousness.  It is not and never has been "the
          fundamental idea of the Cabbalah," but it is one of the most
          useful conceptions to emerge from that very diverse mystical
          complex.











on the number 1.  The words "unity" and "love"1 both add up to 13.  These
ideas are therefore qualities of 1.  Now, 26 combines the idea of duality,
which is the condition of manifestation or consciousness, with this 13; and
we find, accordingly, that 26 is the value of the name Jehovah.  From this
we see Him as the Demiourgos, the manifestation in form of the primordial
"One."
     For many years I worked on these lines continually, adding to Allan's
nucleus, and ultimately making a systematic compilation.  The resulting
book was published in "The Equinox," vol. I., no. viii.  It is the only
dictionary of the Cabbala in existence that can claim any degree of
completeness.  Since its publication, of course, new knowledge has come to
light and I hope to issue a revised edition in course of time.  As it
stands, however, it is the essential book of reference for the student.  It
can never be complete; for one thing, every student must create his own
Cabbala.  My conception, for instance, of the number 6 will not be
identical to yours.  The difference between you and me is, in fact, just
this; you are capable of perceiving one set of aspects of absolute reality,
I another.  The higher our attainment, the more closely will our points of
view coalesce, just as a great English and a great French historian will
have more ideas in common about Napoleon Bonaparte than a Devonshire and a
Provin‡al peasant.  But there will always be more in any being than any man
can know.
     My magical work was pushed into the background by the arrival of
Eckenstein.  He openly jeered at me for wasting my time on such rubbish.
He being brutally outspoken, and I shy and sensitive, I naturally avoided
creating opportunities for him to indulge his coarse ribaldry on a subject
which to me was supremely sacred.  Occasionally, however, I would take
advantage of his unintelligence by talking to him in terms which I knew he
would not understand.  I find that it relieves my mind and helps me to
clarify my thoughts if I inflict my jargon on some harmless stranger
haphazard.  As will be told in due course, Eckenstein and I made a very
thorough exploration of the mountains of Mexico.  During this time, my
magical distress again increased.  I could not relieve it by the narcotic
of preparing and performing actual ceremonies, of silencing the voice of
the demons by absorption in active work.  It was while we were preparing
our expedition to Colima that I broke out one evening and told Eckenstein
my troubles, as I had done often enough before with no result beyond an
insult or a sneer.  Balaam could not have been more surprised when his ass
began to prophesy that I was when, at the end of my outburst, Eckenstein
turned on me and gave me the worst quarter of an hour of my life.  He
summed up my magical situation and told me that my troubles were due to my
inability to control my thoughts.  He said: "Give up your Magick, with all
its romantic fascinations and deceitful delights, Promise to do this for a

{213}


        1  WEH Note: In the Hebrew language.


















time and I will teach you how to master your mind."  He spoke with the
absolute authority which comes from profound and perfect knowledge.  And,
as I sat and listened, I found my faith fixed by the force of facts.  I
wondered and worshipped.  I thought of Easter '98, when I wandered in
Wastdale in despair and cried to the universe for someone to teach me the
truth, when my imagination was impotent to forge the least link with any
helper.  Yet at that very hour, sitting and smoking by the fire opposite
me, or roped to me on a precipice, was the very man I needed, had I but had
the intuition to divine his presence!
     I agreed at once to his proposals and he taught me the principles of
concentration.  I was to practise visualizing simple objects; and when I
had succeeded in keeping these fairly steady, to try moving objects, such
as a pendulum.  The first difficulty is to overcome the tendency of an
object to change its shape, size, position, colour, and so on.  With moving
objects, the trouble is that they try to behave in an erratic manner.  The
pendulum wants to change its rate, the extent of its swing or the plane in
which it travels.
    There were also practices in which I had to imagine certain sounds,
scents, tastes and tactile sensations.  Having covered this ground-work to
his satisfaction, he allowed me to begin to visualize human figures.  He
told me that the human figure acts differently from any other object.  "No
one has ever managed to keep absolutely still."  There is also a definite
test of success in this practice.  The image should resolve itself into
two; a smaller and a larger superimposed.  It is said that by this means
one can investigate the character of the person of whom one is thinking.
The image assumes a symbolic form, significant of its owner's moral and
intellectual qualities.
     I practised these things with great assiduity; in fact, Eckenstein put
the brake on.  One must not overstrain the mind.  Under his careful
tuition, I obtained great success.  There is no doubt that these months of
steady scientific work, unspoiled by my romantic 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 fourteen thousand feet.  We remained there for a
matter of three weeks and climbed this, the most beautiful mountain in
Mexico, from every possible side.  In doing so, we incidentally broke
several world's records.
     Our difficulties were in some ways severe.  The canned food procurable
in Mexico City was of inferior quality and many years old at that.
Eckenstein

{214}


        1   WEH Note: AL I,44
















was constantly ill with diarrhea and I was not much better.  Finally food
gave out altogether and our last three days we had literally nothing but
champagne and Danish butter.  We didn't care much; we had done what we had
set out to do.  Besides, I had learnt a great deal about camp life, the
fine points of glissading, and the use of Steigeisen.  In 1899, at the
Montanvers, I had already found that his mechanically perfect "claws"
worked miracles.  We had shown a young man for Oxford, Dr. T. G. Longstaff,
of what they were capable.  Eckenstein would walk on a measured slope of
over seventy degrees of hard black ice without cutting a step.  On slopes
up to fifty degrees he could simply stroll about.  Nor could Longstaff pull
him off by the rope.
     On the grand scale, too, I had proved their possibilities.  One day,
Eckenstein being ill, I had arranged to go with Longstaff and his two
guides over the Col du G‚ant.  Not feeling very fit myself, I thought I
would start an hour ahead of the others.  Having inspected the ice fall, I
found a way straight up.  When I was about half way through the s‚racs, I
heard Longstaff's guides yelling blue murder.  I had taken the "wrong" way.
Their route involved a detour of a mile or more.  I took not notice of
their friendly anxiety and reached the top a long way in advance.  When
they arrived, they explained that what I had done was impossible.  To carry
on the joke, when we got back I offered a hundred and fifty francs to any
party that would repeat the climb by my route.  Nobody did so.
     It is really astonishing and distressing that (after all these years
of proof that men with proper claws are to men without them 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 would convert the most perilous passages into
promenades, and ice slopes whose length an steepness make step-cutting
impracticable into serenely simple staircases.  The policy of boycotting
Eckenstein and his school, of deliberately ignoring the achievements of
Continental climbers, to say nothing of my own expeditions, has preserved
the privilege and prestige of the English Alpine Club.  Ignorance and
incompetence are unassailable.  Ridicule does not reach the realms of
secure snobbery.  The mountains themselves vainly maim and murder the
meddlers; they merely clamour all the more conceitedly to be considered
heroes.  It is one of the most curious characteristics of the English that
they set such store by courage as to esteem a man the more highly the more
blindly he blunders into disaster.

{215}





















We thought it rather unfair to take cove against Boer marksmanship; we are
still proud of being unprepared in the Great War.  We doubt whether science
is sportsmanlike; and so it is thought rotten bad form to point out how
mismanagement smashed Scott's expedition.  No gentleman criticizes the
conduct of the campaign of Gallipoli.
     In March 1922 I heard of the composition and projects of the Everest
expedition.  I wrote an article predicting failure and disaster, giving my
reasons and showing how to avoid the smash.  No one would print it.  I was
told it was the the thing to "crab" these gallant gentlemen.  No.  But
should my prophecies come true, then was the time to explain why.  What I
had foretold came to pass precisely as I had predicted it.  But I was still
unable to get a hearing.  Why add to the tribulations of these heroes by
showing up their stupidity?  Besides, England had failed --- better not
talk about it at all.
     On Iztaccihuatl, on off days, we had a lot of practice with rifles and
revolvers.  At that altitude and in that clear air one's shooting becomes
superb.  We found we could do at a hundred yards better than we had ever
done before at twenty-five.  We used to knock the bottoms out of bottles,
end-on, without breaking the necks.  In Mexico we used to make rather a
point of practising with firearms whenever we struck a new district.  A
reputation for expertness is the best protection against local marauders.
     For instance.  We once fell in with a party of railway engineers, one
short.  The absentee had strolled out after dinner to enjoy the cool of the
air.  He was found in the morning naked, with a machete wound in the back.
He had been treacherously murdered for the value of a suit worth, at the
outside, five shillings.
     When we retuned to Amecameca, we went at once to pay our respects to
the Jefe Politico, to ask him to dinner to celebrate our triumph.  He had
been very kind and useful in helping us to make various arrangements.  When
he saw us he assumed an air of sympathetic melancholy.  We wondered what it
could mean.  By degrees he brought himself to break to us gently the
terrible news.  Queen Victoria was dead!  To the amazement of the worthy
mayor, we broke into shouts of joy and an impromptu war dance.
     I thin this incident rather important.  In reading Mr. Lytton
Strachey's "Eminent Victorians," and still more his "Queen Victoria," as also
in discussing periods with the younger generation, I find total failure to
appreciate the attitude of artists and advanced thinkers who remember her
jubilee.  They cannot realize that to us Victoria was sheer suffocation.
While she lived it would be impossible to tale a single step in any
direction.  She was a huge and heavy fog; we could not see, we could not
breathe.  Under her, England had advanced automatically to prosperity.
Science too had surged up from sporadic spurts into a system.  And yet,
somehow or other, the spirit of her age had killed everything we cared for.
Smug, sleek, superficial, servile,

{216}




















snobbish, sentimental shopkeeping had spread everywhere.  Even Darwinism
had become respectable.  Even Bradlaugh had been accepted.  James Thomson
had been starved and classed with the classics.  Swinburne had been whacked
and washed and brushed and turned into a model boy.  The Church of England
had collapsed under the combined assault of rationalism and Rome; yet,
deprived of its religious element, and torn from its historical
justification, it persisted placidly.  The soul of England was stagnant,
stupefied!  Nothing remained for which a man might be willing either to
live or to die.  Huxley, Manning, Booth, Blavatsky, Ray Lankester --- it
mattered nothing what they said and did, all were equally stifled in
shapeless sacks, stowed away indistinguishably, their voices mingled in the
murmur of polite society.
     It is hard to say why Queen Victoria should have seemed the symbol of
this extraordinary state of suspended animation.  Yet there was something
in her physical appearance and her moral character which pointed to her as
the perfect image of this inhibiting idea.  The new generation, seeing
their predecessors in perspective, perceive the individual qualities of
each.  There is nothing to tell them that in those days each one of us
seethed with impotent rage at our doom.  We were all damned with faint
praise.  Sir Richard Burton was toned down into a famous traveller and
translator; Gordon sentimentalized into a warrior saint;  Hardy was
accepted as the Homer of Wessex; Meredith patted on the back as the modern
Ovid.  It was impossible to dynamite the morass of mediocrity.  Progress
was impossible.  The most revolutionary proposals, the most blasphemous
theories, lost their sting.  A sovereign of suit, a parliament of putty, an
aristocracy of alabaster, an intelligentsia of india-rubber, a proletariat
of pulp; it was impossible to shape such material.  The strongest
impression was blunted by the inertia of the viscous glue which resisted
nothing, but resumed its formlessness as soon as the immediate impulse of
the impact was spent.
     England had become a hausfrau's idea of heaven, and the empire an
eternal Earl's Court exhibition.  This was the real reason why people who
loved England, like Tom Broadbent in "John Bull's Other Island," used to
indulge in spasms of glee whenever we happened to have a corporal's file
ambushed by some horde of savages1.
     Our next expedition was to the Colima District.  The mountain is here
divided into two very distinct sections; one is snow-clad, the other one of
the most frequently active volcanoes in the world.  Going over the shoulder
of the Nevado, we emerged from a forest to get our first view of the
Volcan, some twelve miles away.  As we watched, an eruption occurred.  The
wind was blowing towards us and the next thing we knew was that falling
ashes were burning little holes in our clothes.  We began to suspect that
the ascent

{217}


        1   P.S. --- And in 1929 I find myself rather regretting those
          "spacious days"!

















might be troublesome.  We settled the Nevado straight off.  The climbing is
of little interest and no difficulty.  Then we camped on a spur for a week,
and took turns, day and night, to watch the behaviour of the volcano.  The
inspection was disappointing; we could not discover any periodicity in the
explosions; we could simply take our chance.  We started accordingly; but,
finding our feet beginning to burn through our boots, decided to retire
gracefully.
     Our third objective was Toluca.   Here we had two delightful days.
For some reason or other we had not brought the tent and slept in the
crater in our ponchos.  In the morning I found myself about three inches
thick in hoarfrost.  On the first day we climbed what was apparently the
highest summit.  (The formation is that of the rim of an enormous crater.)
When we got there we found that another point a long way off was higher.
The next morning Eckenstein was sick and I had to go alone.  There was some
difficult rock climbing on the wall which led to the ridge.  But once
there, the summit was easily reached.  There are many magnificent teeth,
which I climbed conscientiously; a most exhilarating exercise.  I traversed
some distance till I found a gap on the other ridge from which I could run
down to the crater.  We went down to the plateau the same day and returned
to the city.
     On this excursion we met a man who said he had seen with his own eyes
the famous phantom city.  This yarn has for me a peculiar fascination.  I
am not sure that I do not believe that in some sense it is true, thought it
would be hard to say in exactly what sense.  I heard the story at least a
dozen times; twice first-hand from serious informants.  The story varies
but slightly and only in unimportant details.
     It general tenor is this: A man on horseback, sometimes a solitary
prospector, sometimes a member of a party temporarily separated from the
rest, but always alone, loses his way in hilly wooded country.  (The
district varies considerably with the narrator, but as a rule is somewhere
within a couple of hundred miles of Mexico City, the direction being
between north-west and south-west.)  The horseman is eager to find a way
out of the forest, so that he may take his bearings.  It is getting late;
he does not want to camp out if he can help it.  At last he sees the trees
thinning out; he hurries forward and finds himself on the brink of the
hillside.  At this moment darkness falls suddenly.  It is impossible to
proceed.  Then he sees on the hillside opposite, possibly two or three
miles distant, a city gleaming white.  It is not a large city by modern
standards, but it is an important city.  For its size, it is very bravely
built.  The architecture does not suggest a modern city; I have heard it
described as "like an Arabian Nights city", "like an old Greek city", "like
an Aztec city".  The traveller proposes to himself to visit it in the
morning.  But when he wakes there is not trace of it.  There is not even
any distinguishing

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character about the hillside where he saw it which might have suggested the
idea of a city to a tired man.  In some cases lights are seen in the city;
occasionally there is even the sound of revelry.
     Talking of liars!  We suddenly discovered that we were regarded in the
light ourselves.  I suppose it is the abject ignorance and narrow outlook
of ordinary people that makes them sceptical about anything out of the
common.  However, that may be, a paragraph appeared in the Mexican "Herald"
which indirectly threw doubt on our expeditions.  It was particularly
pointless; we had published noting, made no claims, behaved in fact exactly
as we should have done in the Alps.  But Eckenstein was annoyed at the
impertinence and proposed to take summary vengeance.  He accordingly went
down to the low bar frequented by the peccant reporter, bought him a few
drinks, congratulated him on his literary style, and politely regretted
that he should have been led into error by ignorance of his subject.
     The reporter was far from sure that the conversation would not
suddenly by a bullet being put through him, for Eckenstein always looked a
very formidable customer; but he found himself charmingly invited to come
with us and climb Popocatapetl, so as to acquire first-hand knowledge of
mountains and the men who climbed them.  He gaily and gratefully accepted
this insidious proposition.  We rode merrily up to the sulphur ranch, where
intending climbers stay the night.  The next morning the fun began.  One of
the world's records which we had left in tatters was that for pace uphill
at great heights.  Long before we got to the lowest point of the rim of the
crater our sceptical friend found that he couldn't go another yard --- he
had to turn back.  We assured him that the case was common, but could
easily be met by use of the rope.  So we tied him securely to the middle;
Eckenstein set a fierce pace up hill, while I assisted his tugging by
prodding the recalcitrant reporter with my axe.  He exhausted the gamut of
supplication.  We replied only by cheerful and encouraging exhortations,
and by increased efforts.  We never checked our rush till we stood on the
summit.  It was probably the first time that it had ever been climbed in an
unbroken sprint.  Our victim was by this time convinced that we could climb
mountains.  And he was certainly the sorriest sight!
     Even on the descent, his troubles were not over.  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 became seriously friendly.  He took his lesson like a good
sportsman and made his

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apologies in the Mexican "Herald," by writing a long account of his adventure
in the style of the then famous Mr. Dooley.
     Eckenstein and I lived in an American apartment house, from the roof
of which one could see a great distance down a principal thoroughfare.
     Eckenstein used to lure people to discuss eyesight and mention that
mine was miraculous for distant objects.  It would by arrange for me to
drop in at this stage, accidentally on purpose, and then Eckenstein would
offer to prove his tall stories on the spot.  So we would go up to the roof
with field glasses and I would describe distant objects in great detail,
read names on shops a quarter of a mile off, etc. etc.  The victim would
check this through the field glasses, confirming my accuracy.  No one ever
suspected that this stunt had been prepared by my using the field glasses
and learning the scenery by heart!
     I should have mentioned a short excursion which I took to Vera Cruz.
My ostensible object was to see some cases of yellow fever.  As a matter of
fact, I was horribly afraid of the disease.  So I picked an occasion when
the port had shown a clean bill of health for the previous three weeks.  I
had an introduction to a local doctor and told him how sorry I was not to
be able to see any cases.  "Well, well," said he, "come round to the
hospital tomorrow morning anyhow --- some points may be of interest."  And
then I found any amount of yellow Jack, mendaciously diagnosed as malaria,
typhoid, etc., in the hope of throwing dust in the eyes of the United
States inspectors and getting them to remove the quarantine.
     The journey from Vera Cruz back to the city is to my mind the finest
in the world from the point of view of spectacular effect; the second best
is from the Ganges up to Darjeeling.  For the first forty miles one runs
through tropical jungle, then the track suddenly begins to mount and wind
its way among the sub-alpine gorges, with the whole eighteen thousand feet
of Citlaltepetl towering above.  The scenery continually changes in
character as one ascends, and then quite suddenly one comes out on the
plateau, a level vastness almost desert save from cactus and aloe, with the
two cones of Istaccihuatl and Popocatapetl sticking out of it.
     We had intended to finish our programme by climbing Citlatepetl; but
there were difficulties about mules and none about the mountain.  We were
too bored to trouble to climb it.  Somehow or other, the current of our
enthusiasm had become exhausted.  We had achieved all our real objects and
the next thing was to get ready for the Himalayas.  Eckenstein returned to
England and on the twentieth of April I started for San Francisco, westward
bound.  My objective was a curious one.  Since leaving England, I had
thought over the question of the authority of Mathers with ever increasing
discomfort.  He had outraged every principle of probity and probability;
but he was justified, provided that his primary postulate held good.  I
could think

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of only one way of putting him to the test.  It concerned an episode at
which Allan Bennett was present.  Allen, and he alone, could confirm the
account which Mathers had given me.  If he did so, Mathers was vindicated;
if not, it was fatal to his claims.  It seems absurd to travel eight
thousand miles to ask one question --- a childish question into the
bargain!  --- but that was what I did.  The sequel will be told in the
proper place.























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                              26





     I broke the journey at El Paso.  Coming straight from the quiet
civilization of Mexico it was a terrible shock to find myself in touch with
the coarse and brutal barbarism of Texas.  There are many unpleasant sides
of life which cannot be avoided without shirking reality altogether; but in
the United States they were naked and horrible.  The lust of money raged
stark without the softening influences of courtesy.  Drunkenness was
stripped of good fellowship; the sisterhood of sin presented no deceptive
attractions.  The most idealistic innocent could not have been under a
moment's illusion --- they were stalled like cattle in rows of wooden
shanties; and they carried on their business with fierce commercial
candour.  All those little grace of life which make bought kisses tolerable
to those sensitive people who are willing to be fooled, were absent.
     I strolled across to Juarez to kiss my girl goodbye.  O Mexico, my
heart still throbs and burns whenever memory brings you to my mind!  For
many other countries I have more admiration and respect, but none of them
rivals your fascination.  Your climate, your customs, your people, your
strange landscapes of dreamlike enchantment rekindle my boyhood.
     Outside Juarez was a labour camp.  Public works of some sort were in
progress --- at least such progress as we find in Mexico!  Hundreds of men
were loafing about at their eternal cigarettes and tossing various
liquefactions of heel-fire down their chilli-armoured gullets.  Most of the
groups were squatting round a soiled poncho, on which were scattered coins
and greasy cards.  I stood and watched one party of three.  The swearing,
jabbering and quarrelling were incessant here, as all over the camp.
Nothing struck me as abnormal.  Then, like a flash of forked lightning, one
of the men flung himself across the poncho and twisted his fingers in the
hair of the man opposite.  (Astounding recklessness to let it grow so
long!)  He thrust his thumbs into the corners of his enemy's eyes, as he
writhed and kicked on top of him, the momentum of his spring having bowled
the other on to his back.  The man's eyes were torn from their sockets in a
second and his assailant, disengaging himself by a violent jerk from his
victim's clutch, made off like an arrow across country to the frontier.
The shrieks of the mutilated man were answered by universal uproar.  Some
followed on foot, others ran to their bronchos, but the great majority
maintained an attitude of philosophical indifference.  It was no business
of theirs, except so far as it might remind them to visit the barber.

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     I went on to San Francisco.  The city is famous in history for the
earthquake of 1906; and for having starved Stevenson, who has described it
admirably in "The Wrecker."
     It was a glorified El Paso, a madhouse of frenzied money-making and
frenzied pleasure-seeking, with none of the corners chipped off.  It is
beautifully situated and the air reminds one curiously of Edinburgh.  At
that time it possessed a real interest and glory --- its Chinatown.  During
the week I was there, I spent most of my time in that quarter.  It was the
first time that I had come into contact with the Chinese spirit in bulk;
and, though thee exiles were naturally the least attractive specimens of
the race, I realized instantly their spiritual superiority to the Anglo-
Saxon, and my own deep-seated affinity to their point of view.  The
Chinaman is not obsessed by the delusion that the profits and pleasures of
life are really valuable.  He gets all the more out of them because he
knows their worthlessness, and is consequently immune from the
disappointment which inevitably embitters those who seek to lay up treasure
on earth.  A man must really be a very dull brute if, attaining all his
ambitions, he finds satisfaction.  The Eastern from Lao Tzu and the Buddha
to Zoroaster and Ecclesiastes, feels in his very bones the futility of
earthly existence.  It is the first postulate of his philosophy.
     California got on my nerves.  Life in all its forms grew rank and
gross, without a touch of subtlety.  I embodied this feeling in a sonnet:

          ... gross and great
          Her varied fruits and flowers alike create
          Glories most unimaginable ...
          ... yet this is sore,
          A stain; not one of these is delicate.

     For some time, I had been contemplating a lyric poem in which
everything in the world should be celebrated in detail.  It was a crazy
notion --- one of those fantastic follies which is impossible in nature ---
a species of literary "squaring the circle".  I doubt whether it was a
genuine impulse.  Its motive was the vanity and vulgarity of attempting
something big.  It was the American passion for tall buildings and record
processions in another form.  It was the probably my reaction to the
spiritual atmosphere of California.  In any case, the worst happened.  I
began it!  The best plan will be to describe what happened and get it over.
     It was not finished till the middle of 1904.  Book I is in form a
gigantic Greek ode.  It celebrates all the forces of nature and the
children of time.  Orpheus invokes them in turn; and they reply.  Book II
describes the winning of Eurydice by Orpheus.  It is entirely a monologue
by him.  My literary insanity is well indicated by my proposal to insert a
five-act play, "The Argonauts," afterwards published separately, as an
incident in his wooing!

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Book III describes the visit of Orpheus to Hades; and contains the
invocations of the necessary deities, with their replies.  Book IV relates
the death of Orpheus.  Unwieldy as the poem is, it contains some of my best
lyrics.  Further, even conceding that the entire effort was a fiasco, it
must be admitted that the task of writing it was an excellent discipline;
it taught me a great deal about technique and its very awkwardness warned
me what to avoid.
     On May 1st I find in my diary the following words: "I solemnly began
anew the operations of the Great Work."  I had mapped out for myself a
definite programme which was to combine what I had learnt from Eckenstein
with the methods of the Order.  For instance: I had extracted the Magical
Formula of the Ritual of Neophyte and applied it to a Ceremony of Self-
Initiation.  I now simplified this and got rid of the necessity of the
physical temple by expressing it in a series of seven mental operations.
     Other practices were the "assumption of God-forms"; by concentrated
imagination of oneself in the symbolic shape of any God, one should be able
to identify oneself with the idea which He represents.  There there was
meditation on simple symbols with the idea of penetrating to their secret
meaning.  I was also to keep up my practices of astral visions and "rising
on the planes", in particular the special official method of invoking
Adonai-ha-Aretz.  I was also to continue the work Eckenstein had taught me,
on his lines.  As to more magical matters, I proposed to continue the
evocation of elemental forces to visible appearance, to make various
talismans and charge them with spiritual energy by means of meditation, and
to continue the building up of my (so-called) astral body until it was
sufficiently material to be perceptible to the ordinary physical sense of
people whom I should visit in this shape.  There will be found in my
Magical Record numerous accounts af this last experiment.
     In the autumn of '98 my friend, J. L. Baker, whom I hastened to see in
London on my return from the Alps, took me on my first astral journey.  The
details of the method are given in full in "The Equinox," Vol. Im No. II,
"(Liber O)."  I may here outline them thus:
     Imagine an image of yourself, standing in from of you.  Transfer your
consciousness to it.  Rise upward.  Invoking forces desired by the
prescribed methods.  Observe their appearance.  Test their authenticity.
Enter into conversation with them.  Travel under their guidance to the
particular part of the universe which you desire to explore.  Return to
earth.  Cause the Body of Light to coincide spatially with the physical.
Reconnect them, using the sign of Harpocrates.  Resume normal
consciousness.  Record the experience.  Test its value by the critical
methods advocated in "The Equinox."
     After only a few such journeys I found myself much stronger on the
wing that my tutor.  He was always getting into trouble.  Demoniac forms
would threaten the circle.  He tired easily.  He often placed confidence in
lying

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spirits.  In fact, his goodwill exceeded his ability.  It all came as
natural to me as swimming does to a duck. I picked up all the technical
tricks of the trade almost by instinct; such as enable one to detect
imposition on the instant, to banish disturbing elements, to penetrate the
veils and pacify the warders of the secret sanctuaries; and to assure the
accuracy of the information obtained, by methods the precision of which
precludes the possibility of coincidence.
     I soon found it necessary to develop the Body of Light.  I explored
such remote, exalted and well-guarded adyta that the necessary invocations
and sacraments required more energy than was at the disposal of the Body of
Light which normally separates from its physical envelope.  The result was
that I soon built up a body so powerful that it was clearly visible to the
physical vision of all but the grossest types of humanity.  It also
acquired an independence of my conscious will which enabled it to travel on
its own initiative without my knowledge.  Strange tales began to circulate,
some doubtless true, others probably coloured, and, of course, not a few
baseless inventions.
     As a type of the first class, let me quote the following: G. H. Frater
S.R.M.D. had asked me to visit him in Paris.  He expected me in the
afternoon.  My train was late; I was tired and dirty.  I postponed my call
till the following day.  To my surprise, my host and hostess did not greet
me quite as I expected.  In the course of our talk they made allusions
which were quite unintelligible.  At last we became aware that we were
talking at crosspurposes.  The crash came when Soror Vestigia insisted,
"But you said so yourself at tea!"  I couldn't remember that I had ever
been there to tea.  On my one previous visit I had lunched one day and
dined the next, but no more.  "At tea!" I echoed, bewildered.  "Yes, at
tea!" she repeated.  "Surely you remember.  It was only yesterday."  We
compared times.  I was then dozing in the train from Calais.  It then came
out that I had called quite normally, though I seemed tired and dazed.  I
had stayed about an hour.  Nothing had let them to suspect that I was not
physically present.
     Of the third class, I remember chiefly that my Sister Fidelis was
cursed with a horrible mother, a sixth-rate singer, a first-rate snob, with
dewlaps and a paunch; a match-maker, mischief-maker, maudlin and muddle-
headed.  The ghastly hag put it all round London and New York that I had
entered her daughter's room at night in my Body of Light.  I don't know
whether she went beyond the vile suggestion.  Even had the tale been true,
which Fidelis disdainfully denied, the woman must have been as witless as
she was worthless to splash her own daughter with such ditch-water.
     All the same, I feel grateful.  Her stupid lie put it into my head to
make the experiment in question, though of course with the knowledge and
approval of the girl.  The result is recorded in a subsequent chapter.

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     When I began to develop this power consciously, I obtained
considerable success.  At the time of this journey I had arranged to visit
a sister of the Order who lived in Hong Kong; at prearranged times, so that
she might be looking out for me.  Several of these visits turned out well.
She saw and heard me; and on comparing notes, we found that our reports of
the conversation agreed.  But I was not able to act on "matter".  I used to
try to knock things off the mantelpiece, but in vain.  On the other hand,
when I reached Hong Kong, I recognized the place perfectly and picked out
her house on the hillside, thought I had never seen so much as a
photograph.
     These numerous practices were assigned to a regular schedule.  Five
different periods of the day were to be devoted to one or the other.
     On May 3rd I left for Honolulu on the "Nippon Maru," arriving on the
ninth.  A strange destiny lay in ambush for me among the palms.
     The poetical side of me is annoyed to this day when I think of it.  I
ought to have followed the ideal of Gauguin.  It was absurd to have got so
far only to fall in love with a white woman.  I know now that white women
introduce the idea of impurity into love in one way or another.  There is
something either vicious or intellectual about them.  Love should be a
strictly physiological matter, with just that amount of natural emotion
that goes with it.  But then, such simple happiness is not for me.
     Anyhow, I decided to spend a month on Waikiki Beach.  I had a vague
idea of getting a hut and a native girl, and devoting myself to poetry of
the most wholesome kind with corresponding Magick.  However, at the hotel
was an exquisitely beautiful American woman of Scottish origin.  She was
ten years older than myself and had a boy with her just entering into his
teens.  She was married to a lawyer in the States and had come to Hawaii to
escape hay fever.
     I went on with my magical and other work; in particular, I invented a
practice which has proved very useful.  Its object is to prevent mosquitoes
from biting one.  The method is: to love them.  One reminds oneself that
the mosquito has as much right to his dinner as a man has.  It is difficult
to get the exact shade of feeling and more so to feel it.  One begins by
lying defenceless against the enemy and sternly repressing the impulse to
wave, to slap and to scratch.  After a little perseverance, one finds that
the bites no longer become inflamed; and this preliminary success is soon
followed by complete protection.  The will not bite one at all.
     But my horizon gradually filled with romantic love and other
occupations faded little by little.  The woman was herself worthless from
the points of view of the poet.  Only very exceptional characters are
capable of producing the positive effect; but it is just such women as
Alice who inspire masterpieces, for they do not interfere with one's work.
Passionately as I was in love, and crazily as I was behaving in
consequence, I was still able to make daily notes

{226}




















of the progress of the affair with the detached cynicism of a third party.
I took her with me to Japan1, but there was not enough in her character to
count "the world well lost for love".  Exactly fifty days after I had met
her she beat it back to her "provider"; and I understood immediately why my
subconsciousness had insisted on my scribbling the details of our liaison
in my diary.
     The departure of Alice inspired me to write the story of our love in a
sonnet sequence.  Each day was to immortalize its events in poetry.  This
again was one of my characteristically crude ideas, yet the result was
surprisingly good --- much better, perhaps, than I ever thought, or think
now.  No less a critic than Marcel Schwob called it "a little masterpiece".
And many other people of taste and judgment have professed themselves in
love with it.  Possibly the simplicity of its realism, its sincere and
shame-free expression of every facet of my mind, constitute real merit.  It
is certainly true that most people find much of my work hard to read.  The
intensity of my passion, the profundity of my introspection, and my
addiction to obscure allusions, demand the reader serious study, that he
may grasp my meaning; and subsequent re-reading after my thought has been
assimilated; until, no intellectual obstacle interrupting, he may be
carried away by the current of my music and swept but it into the ocean of
ecstasy which I myself reached when I wrote the poem.  I am aware that few
modern readers are capable of settling down deliberately to decipher me.
And those who are may for that very reason be incapable of the orgiastic
frenzy.  Scholarship and passion rarely go together.  But my muse is the
daughter of Hermes and the mistress of Dionysus.
     I saw comparatively little of Japan.  I did not understand the people
at all and therefore did not like them very much.  Their aristocracy was
somehow at odds with mine.  I resented their racial arrogance.  I compared
them unfavourably with the Chinese.  Like the English, they possess the
insular qualities and defects.  They are not Asiatic, exactly as we are not
European.
     My most interesting impression was Kamakura.  The Daibutsu, colossal
amid his gardens of iris, with no canopy but the sky, does really produce a
sense of his universality; it does remind one of the grandeur and solidity
of his teaching; of the reasonableness of his methods of attainment, the
impersonal peace which is their reward; and of the boundless scope of his
philosophy, independent as it is of all arbitrary assumptions, parochial
points of view, sordid appeals and soul-stupefying superstitions.
     Already there had arisen in me the aspiration to attain to states
whose very

{227}


        1  On the "America Manu."  There were many ladies on board: the wife
          of a railway magnate, the consul's daughter, ad so on.  In
          reality, they were all whores destined for various brothels in
          Japan or Shanghai, where American ladies fetch absurd prices.


















possibility I did not suspect; already I was aware, in the abyss of my
heart, secret and silent, that I was Alastor, the wanderer in the
wilderness, the Spirit of Solitude.  For Kamakura, calmly certain of its
soul-searching accents, called to me to abide in the security of its
shadow, there to toil even as the Buddha had done, that I might come to the
perfect Illumination, and thereby being made free from all the fetters of
falsehood, being to mankind the Word of Wisdom and magic that hath might to
enlighten their eyes, to heal their hearts, and to bring them to a stage of
spiritual evolution such that their poets could not longer lament, as I:

          Nothing is stranger to men
          Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness.

     I inquired as to the possibility of settling down on one of the
neighbouring monasteries; but somehow my instinct opposed my intention.
The Inmost knew that my destiny lay elsewhere.  The Lords of Initiation
cared nothing for my poetic fancies and my romantic ideals.  They had
ordained that I should pass through every kind of hardship at the hands of
nature, suffer all sorrow and shame that life can inflict.  Their messenger
must be tested by every ordeal --- not by those that he himself might
choose.  The boy who, asked to discuss some point of doctrine in the
Epistles, replied, "Far be it from me to presume to parley with St. Paul:
let me rather give a list of the kings of Israel and Judah!"  (the only
thing he knew), probably became a Cabinet minister; but similar adroitness
does not avail the aspirant to adeptship.  The Masters test every link in
turn, infallibly and inexorably; it is up to you to temper your steel to
stand the strain; for one flaw means failure and you have to forge it all
afresh in the fires of fate, retrieve in a new incarnation the lost
opportunity of the old.
     I turned then sadly from Daibutsu, as I had turned from love, ambition
and ease, my spirit silently acquiescing in the arcane arbitrament of the
mysterious daimon who drove me darkly onward; how I knew not, whither I
knew not, but only this, that he was irresistible as inscrutable, yet no
less trustworthy than titanic.
     Alas!  The failure of Alice to reach the summit of live!  Thence are
the valleys of virtue, the rivers of respectability and the sheepfolds of
society seen dim and dull in the distance, bestially beneath our sparkling
snows, or shoreless sky, our sacred sun and sentinel stars.
     Alice had broken my boy's heart; she had taught me what women were
worth.  For her I had surrendered my single-iminded devotion to my
spiritual Quest; I had sold my soul to the devil for sixpence, and the coin
was counterfeit.
     True, one of me knew all along the augury of the adventure; but then,
all the worse!  For if Alice had been a real danger, might not I have
damned

{228}



















myself for her, as many a knight for Venus of the Hollow Hill, as many a
saint for Lilith, Lady of the Lake of Fire?  Yet no: the answer came,
august and austere, from mine Angel, that I had passed the Ordeal.  I had
proved that no passion, however pure and powerful, could enslave me.  The
caresses of no Calypso could chain me in her courts, the cup of Circe
corrupt my chastity, the song of no Siren seduce me to suicide, the wiles
of no Vivien ensnare my simplicity and bind me in the hollow oak of
Broceliande.
     I had intoxicated myself utterly with Alice; I had invested her with
all the insignia that my imagination could invent.  Yet, loving her with
all my heart and soul, she had not seduced me from my service.  I knew ---
and They who put her on my Path knew also --- that I was immune.  I might
dally with Delilah as much as I liked and never risk the scissors.  Love,
who binds other Samsons, blinds them and sets them to serve the
Philistines, to be their scorn and sport, would be to me my Light and lead
me in the way of liberty.  The secret of my strength was the, that love
would always stand a shining symbol of my truth, that I loved spiritually
the soul of mankind.  Therefore each woman, be she chaste or wanton,
faithful or false, inspiring me to scale the summits of song or whispering
me to wallow in the swamps of sin, would be to me no more than a symbol in
whose particular virtue my love could fins the bread and wine of its
universal eucharist.
     Time has confirmed this claim: I have loved many women and been loved.
But I have never wavered from my Work; and always a moment has come when
the woman had to choose between comradeship and catastrophe.  For in truth,
there was no Aleister Crowley to love; there was only a Word for the
utterance of which a human form had been fashioned.  So the foolish
virgins, finding that love and vanity could not live together, gave up a
man for a mirror; but the wise, knowing that man is mortal, gave up the
world for the Work and thereby cheated satiety, disillusionment and death.
     Yet, so fearful was I at this time that I had failed and shown myself
unfit to accomplish the terrific Tasks, to undertake which must be, as I
was warned by some secret sense, the only honour I could accept from the
High Gods, that I continued my journey to Ceylon in a mood not only
contrite but confused.  The calm soft loveliness of the Inland Sea brought
no peace to my spirit; indeed, it made scarcely any impression upon my
aesthetic sense.  The sordid scramble of the foreign settlement of Shanghai
stirred my scorn without rousing me from my stupefaction.  In spite of the
subtle passion to assimilate China which had taken possession of me in San
Francisco, I could not so much as indulge in a saunter through the native
city.  I wanted to reach Hong Kong and tell my troubles to my Sister
Fidelis.  She would understand, judge, encourage and advise, none better.
In the days of the G.'. D.'. debacle, her purity, her fearlessness, her
loyalty, her scorn of all dishonourable device

{229}




















and deed, her single-heartedness, her eager and ecstatic aspiration: these
had made sweet those struggles against the stupid, selfish sectaries with
their petty pique, their treacherous trickeries, their slanders and
squabbles.
     Ah me! the Gods were at their grim game; they had another dagger ready
to slip between my ribs.  Fidelis was now a married woman.  She was still
playing at Magick, as another might play at bridge.  But her true life was
dresses, dinners and dances; and her thought were taken up by her husband
and her lover.  (In hot countries, white men being relaxed by the climate,
European women, over-stimulated for the same reason, almost inevitably
practise polyandry.)
     And she had won the first prize at a fancy dress ball by appearing in
her adept's robes and regalia!
     No hope here, then!  Nay, nor elsewhere!  I saw clearly enough that
the Gods meant me to work out my own puzzles without human help.  I must
stand alone.  Well and good, so be it!  I had the sense to accept the
Ordeal as a compliment.  The umbilical cord was cut: I was an independent
being, with his own way to make in the world.
     On the boat from Yokohama to Shanghai were two American spinsters of
the faded variety, with parchment skin due to dryness of climate and
devotion to virtue and cocktails.  Hearing that I was interested in
literature, hope revived.  They told me their favorite poet was Rossetti.
I was tactless enough to ask which of his poems they had read and
preferred, but it did not runt to that.  It was sufficiently daring to have
heard of Rossetti.  Only absolute shamelessness would read him.  Somewhat
abashed, they informed me that a colleague was travelling on this boat, no
less than Thomas Hardy.  Naturally I jumped and begged an introduction.
     Thomas Hardy was a tall, dignified, venerable figure, with a
patriarchal beard and manner equally courteous and authoritative.  I had
not known he was a clergyman --- as his costume assured me.  After a little
conversation, I began to surmise dimly that there was something wrong, and
might have said something tactless if he had not volunteered an account of
his literary career and been quite unaware of the existence of the Mayor of
Casterbridge.  He was the "great" Thomas Hardy, the only and original bird,
the chaplain to the forces at Hong Kong and author of "How to be happy"
"though married."  I don't know how I kept my face straight.
     As a matter of fact, he was perfectly human and even contributed a
quite valuable item of information as to the psychology of publishers.  He
had aproached one of these ineffable imbeciles1 with his book and been told
that while the text was all that could be desired, it was quite impossible
to publish a book with that title.  The reverend gentleman had the good
sense to reply,

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        1  "Present Company Always Excepted".  (WE ARE NOT SO SURE).



















"You blasted jackass --- God damn your soul to Hell! (or words to that
effect).  Do anything you like with the book, but leave the title alone!"
He cowed them and they complied, with the result that the book sold by
hundreds of thousands.

























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                              27



     I sailed for Ceylon, chiefly because I had said I would go, certainly
not in the hope of assistance from Allan.  Perhaps because I had found my
feet, he was, as will appear, allowed to guide them, in what seemed at
first sight a new Path.  I had got to learn that all roads lead to Rome.
It is proper, more, it is prudent, more yet, it is educative, for the
aspirant to pursue all possible Ways to Wisdom.  Thus he broadens the base
of his Pyramid, thus he diminishes the probability of missing the method
which happens to suit him best, thus he insures against the obsession that
the goat-track of his own success in the One Highway for all men, and thus
he discounts the disappointment of discovering that he is not the Utter,
the Unique, when it becomes plain that Magick, mysticism, and the
mathematics are triplets, and that the Himalayan Brotherhood is to be found
in Brixton.
     I say little of Singapore; I say enough when I say that its curries,
with their vast partitioned platter of curious condiments to lackey them,
speak for themselves.  They sting like serpents, stimulate like strychnine;
they are subtle and sensual like Chinese courtesans, sublime and sacred,
inscrutably inspiring and unintelligibly illumination, like Cambodian
carvings.
     Of Penang I will observe only that its one perfect product is the
"Penang Lawyer".  But I should like to hear of any other city which can say
the same!
     As to Colombo, I love it and loathe it with nicely balanced
enthusiasm.  Its climate is chronic; its architecture is an unhappy
accident; its natives are nasty, the men with long hair cooped up by a
comb, smelling of fish, the women with waists bulging black between coat
and skirt, greasy with coconut oil, and both chewing betel and spitting it
out till their teeth ooze with red and the streets look like shambles; its
English are exhausted and enervated.  The Eurasians are anaemic abortions;
the burghers --- Dutch halfcasts --- stolid squareheads; the Portuguese
piebalds sly sneaks, vicious, venal, vermiform villains.  The Tamils are
black but not comely.  The riff-raff of rascality endemic in all ports is
here exceptionally repulsive.  The highwater mark of social tone, moral
elevation, manners and refinement is attained by the Japanese ladies of
pleasure.
     In the matter of religion, the Hindus are (as everywhere else)
servile, shallow, cowardly and hypocritical; though being mostly Shaivites,
adoring frankly the power of Procreation and Destruction, they are less
loathsome than Vishnavites, who cringe before a fetish who promises them
Preservation and (as Krishna) claims to be the Original of which Christ is
a copy.

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     The Christians are, of course, obscene outcasts from even the
traditional tolerance of their clan; they have accepted Jesus with the
promise of a job, and gag conscience with assurance of atonement, or
chloroform superstitious terrors by ruminating on redemption.  The
Buddhists are sodden with their surfeit of indigestible philosophy and
feebly flaunt a fluttering formula of which the meaning is forgotten; the
debauchery of devil dances, the pointless profession of Pansil (the Five
Precepts of the Buddha), the ceremonial coddling of shrines as old maids
coddle cats, voluble veneration and rigmarole religion: such is the
threadbare tinsel which they throw over the nakedness of their idleness,
immorality and imbecility.
     Indians plausibly maintain that some god got all the worst devils into
Ceylon, and then cut it off from the continent by the straits.
     But then, how rich, how soft, how peaceful is Colombo!  One feels that
one needs never do anything any more.  It invites one to dream deliciously
of deciduous joys --- and insists, with velvet hand, light and bright as a
butterfly's wing, on the eyelids.  The palms, the flowers, the swooning
song of the surf, the dim and delicate atmosphere heavy with sensuous
scents, the idle irresponsible people, purring with placid pleasure; they
seem musicians in an orchestra, playing a nocturne by some oriental Chopin
unconscious of disquieting realities.
     But more, Colombo is the "place where four winds meet", the crossroads
of the civilized world.  Westward lies Europe, the energetic stripling, who
thought to bear the world on his shoulders, but could not co-ordinate his
own muscles.  Northward lies India, like a woman weary of bearing, a widow
holding to her ancient habits without hope.  Southward, Australia, topsy-
turvy as our childhood's wisdom warned us, sprawls its awkward adolescence
and embarrasses its elders by its unconscious absurdity.  Lastly, look
eastward!  There lies China; there is the only civilization that has looked
time in the face without a blush; an atheism with good manners.  There
broods the old wise man, he who has conquered life without the aid of
death, who may survive these strenuous youths and even the worn barren
widow mumbling meaningless memories in her toothless mouth.
     In Colombo this world problem solves itself; for the Indian toils,
without ambition or object, from sheer habit; the European bosses things,
with selfimportance and brafado; the Australian lumbers in and out,
loutishly, hoping not to be seen; and China, silent and absent, conveys
majestically patriarchal reproof by simply ignoring the impertinence.
Slightly as I had brushed against the yellow silken robes of China in the
press of jostling cultures, its virtue had so entered into me that the
positive and aggressive aspects of Colombo, tumultuously troubling through
they were, failed to command my full attention.  As you vainly ply an opium
smoker who craves his pipe with wine, with woman and with song, so the
insolent insistence of the actualities

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of Colombo merely annoyed me; I was intensely aware of one thing only, the
absence of the clossal calm and common sense of China.
     Experience has taught me that imponderables are all-important; when
science declares that it can concern itself only with that which can be
measured, it classes itself with the child that counts on its fingers and
brands Shakespeare and Shelley as charlatans.  I am not ashamed of such
company; let me say then that the silent stress of my contact with the
fringe of Chinese civilization operated in me the cure of my accursed
European anxiety about my conduct.  It is at least the fact that I met
Allan with absolute sang-froid.  I felt no need of confession.  I had no
sense of shame or inferiority.  I had not favour to ask.  I had perfect
confidence in myself.  We were interested in the same Quest, that was all;
it was natural that we should exchange views.
     Behold then!  Allan, though the pupil of a Shaivite guru, was already
at heart a Buddhist; and the miracle about Buddha, from the ethnological
standpoint, is that an Aryan, by dint of sheer psychological acumen, should
have come so near to understanding the Chinese mind.  The fundamental
weakness of Buddhism is that it fails to attain the indifference of Lao-
Tzu.  Buddha wails for Nibbana as the sole refuge from sorrow; Lao-Tzu
despises sorrow as casually as he despises happiness and is content to
reach equably to every possible impression.
     Must I digress to excuse Allan Bennett, the noblest and the gentlest
soul that I have ever known?  Surely the immanence of physical agony, the
continual anguish of the cross on which he has been nailed for more than
fifty years, he not complaining, he not submitting, he not demanding
release, but working inexorably and inexpugnably at this appointed Task ---
surely the unremitting stroke of that fell fact must have avenged itself
for its foiled malice by fashioning his conception of the universe in the
same form as seemed omnivalent to the Buddha, who could not estimate the
influence of his vain desolating years of idle luxury and the abortive
atonement of his random reaction to angry asceticism.
     Allan never knew joy; he disdained and distrusted pleasure from the
womb.  Is it strange that he should have been unable to conceive life as
aught but ineluctable and fatuous evil?  For myself, I saw pleasure as
puerile, sorrow as senile; I was ready, when mine hour should arrive, to
accept either amicably or dismiss both disdainfully.
     Meanwhile, I was simply an adept --- wandering round the world in the
way adepts have --- bent on picking up any pearls that proved their
pedigrees from honest oysters and were guaranteed rejected by swine.
     So, when I saw Allan, I put my question, referred to above, and got my
answer.
     The official record is subjoined.

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     D.D.C.F., Mathers, had told me a certain incident which had taken
place between himself and Bennett as follows:

          He and I.A. had disagreed upon an obscure point in theology,
     thereby formulating the accursed Dyad, thereby enabling the Abra-Melin
     demons to assume material form: one in his own shape, another in that
     of I.A.  Now, the demon that looked like I.A. had a revolver, and
     threatened to shoot him (D.D.C.F.), while the demon that resembled
     himself was equally anxious to shoot I.A.  Fortunately, before the
     demons could fire, V.N.R. (Mrs. Mathers() came into the room, thus
     formulating the symbol of the Blessed Trinity.
          Frater I.A.'s account was less of a strain upon P.'s faculties of
     belief.  They had had, he said, an argument about the God Shiva, the
     Destroyer, whom I.A. worshipped because, if one repeated his name
     often enough, Shiva would one day open his eye and destroy the
     universe, and whom D.D.C.F. feared and hated because He would one day
     open His eye and destroy D.D.C.F.  I.A. closed the argument by
     assuming the position Padmasana and repeating the Mantra: "Shiva,
     Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva."  D.D.C.F., angrier than ever,
     sought the sideboard, but soon returned, only to find Frater I.A.
     still muttering: "Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva."  "Will you stop
     blaspheming?" cried D.D.C.F.; but the holy man only said: "Shiva,
     Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva."  "If you
     don't stop I will shoot you!" said D.D.C.F., drawing a revolver from
     his pocket and leveling it at I.A.'s head; but I.A., being
     concentrated, took no notice and continued to mutter: "Shiva, Shiva,
     Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva."
          Whether overawed by the majesty of the saint or interrupted by
     the entry of a third person, I.A. no longer remembered, but D.D.C.F.
     never pulled the trigger.

     Mathers thus disposed of, to business!
     What of the Great Work?  Did it become absurd with Mathers?  No more
than Everest ceases to attract when the Alpine Club caps incompetence with
manslaughter!
     We simply dismissed from our minds the whole question of the G.'.
D.'. and restated the problem on first principles.
     In this situation, I had the advantage of wider reading and more
varied experience than Allan; he, that of more intensive training, and
especially of his recent initiation into Asiatic arcana under the aegis of
Shri Parananda, Solicitor-General of Ceylon (as Aramis was a musketeer) "per"
"interim," and a yogi "cap-…-pied."  I had learnt modesty from Eckenstein's
engineering epithets and Mexican mountains; so I shut up --- as Doris Gomez
once immortally observed, at the conclusion of a prolonged and
uninterrupted harangue, "If

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you've got anything more to say, shut up!" --- and concentrated on learning
the least lemma of his lore instead of inflicting on him my own intimations
of immortality.
     He expressed the elements of Yoga.  I said, "Your health will improve
in a climate less addicted to damp and damnability: come to Kandy; we'll
get a bungalow and get busy.  Damn Shri Parananda!  Let him excel his
commentary on St. Matthew, where he explains the discrepancy with another
Evangelist by 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 presence" of the pious Prananda, whose
arrogance and meanness be equated with his scholarship and sanctity.  We
sampled Kandy --- which has delights (permit the pun for the
advertisement!) unsuspected by "Mary Elizabeth".  We took a furnished
bungalow called "Marlobrough" (God knows why!) on the hills, by a stream,
with waterfall complete, overlooking the lake, the temple and an amateur
attempt at an hotel.  We hired a hopeless headman, who sub-hired sleepy and
sinister servants and dismissed all these damnable details from our minds,
devoting ourselves with diabolical determination and saintly simplicity to
the search for a spiritual solution to the material muddle.  Our sojourn,
short as it was by worldly reckoning, proved to be pregnant with events of
internal import.  The tyrant time took his first wound in Kandy.






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                              28



     Allan's adventures in Ceylon had been varied.  His first idea had been
to take the Yellow Robe; that is, to become a member of the Buddhist
Sangha.  These men are not priests or monks, as we understand the words; it
is hard for European minds to understand the conditions of their life.
They have renounced the world and live as mendicants; but it may be stated
roughly that the rules of their Order, which are very complex and often
seem irrational or frivolous, are all devised in the interest of a single
idea.  Each rule meets some probably contingency.  But in every case the
object is to enable the bhikkhu to carry out his programme of spiritual
development.  There are no superstitious terrors, no propitiatory
practices; the while object is to enable a man to free himself from the
fetters of desire which hamper his actions, and (incidentally) produce the
phantasms which we call phenomena.  In Buddhism, the universe is conceived
as an illusion, created by ignorant cravings.  It is, in fact, a dream as
defined by Freud's hypothesis.
     Allan was already at heart a Buddhist.  The more he studied the
Tripitika, "the three baskets of the law" --- waste paper baskets I used to
call them --- the more he was attracted, but he was fearfully disappointed
by the degeneracy of the Singalese bhikkhus.  With rate exceptions, they
were ignorant, idle, immoral and dishonest.  At Anuradhapura, the sacred
ruined city, there conduct is so openly scandalous as to have given rise to
a proverb: "A bhikkhu is made, not born --- except at Anuradhapura."  Allan
had been offered the post of treasurer to a famous monastery outside
Colombo, for the avowed reason that they could not trust any one of
themselves.  Considering that a bhikkhu is not allowed to touch money at
all, this was rather the limit.
     The Solicitor-Generral of Ceylon, the Hon. P. Ramanathan, engaged
Allan as private tutor to his younger sons.  This gentleman was a man of
charming personality, wide culture and profound religious knowledge.  He
was eminent as a yogi of the Shaivite sect of Hindus (he was a Tamil of
high caste) and had written commentaries on the gospels of Matthew and
John, interpreting the sayings of Christ as instructions in Yoga.  It is
indeed a fact that one of the characters who have been pieced together to
compose the figure of "Jesus" was a yogi.  His injunctions to abandon
family ties, to make no provision for the future, and so on, are typical.
     From this man, Allan learnt a great deal of the theory and practice of
Yoga.  When he was about eighteen, Allan had accidentally stumbled into

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the trance called Shivadarshana, in which the universe, having been
perceived in its totality as a single phenomenon, independent of space and
time, is then annihilated.  This experience had determined the whole course
of his life.  His one object was to get back into that state.  Shri
Parananda showed him a rational practical method of achieving his.  Yet
Allan was not wholly in sympathy with his teacher, who, despite his great
spiritual experience, had not succeeded in snapping the shackles of dogma,
and whose practice seem in some respects tat variance with his principles.
Allan was almost puritanically strict.  He had been offered a position as
manager of a coconut plantation, but refused it on learning that his duties
would involve giving orders for the destruction of vermin.  He had not
sufficient breadth of view to see that any kind of life implies
acquiescence in, and therefore responsibility for, murder; by eating rice
one becomes the accomplice of the agriculturist in destroying life.
     His health was vastly improved.  In the Red Sea his asthma completely
disappeared and he had thrown overboard his entire apparatus of drugs.  But
the enervating climate of Colombo sapped his energies.  He had little
hesitation in accepting my proposal to go and live at Kandy and devote
ourselves to Yoga.
     At "Marlborough" we found the conditions for work very favourable.
The firs step was to get rid of all other preoccupations.  I revised
"Tannh„user," wrote an introduction, typed it all out and sent it to the
press.  I put aside "Orpheus" and left aside "Alice, An Adultery" to ripen.  I
did not think much of it; and would not publish it until time had ratified
it.
     One of my principal inhibitions at this period was due to the apparent
antinomy between the normal satisfaction of bodily appetites and the
obvious conditions of success.  I did not solve this completely until my
attainment of the Grade of Mater of the Temple in 1909, when at last I
realized that every thought, word and act might be pressed into the service
of the soul: more, that it must be if the soul were ever to be free.  I
"mixed up the planes" for many years to some extent, though never as badly
as most mystics do.
     During this retirement I was fortunate in being under the constant
vigilant supervision of Allan Bennett, whose experience enabled him to
detect the firs onset of disturbing ideas.  For instance, the revising and
typing of "Tannh„user" were quite sufficient to distract my mind from
meditation, and would even upset me in such apparently disconnected matters
as Pranayama.  It is easy to understand that a heavy meal will interfere
with one's ability to control one's respiration; but one is inclined to
laugh at the Hindu theory that it can be affected by such things as casual
conversation.  None the less, they are right.  Apart from one's normal
reactions, these practices make one supersensitive.  I was not confining
myself to any rigid

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diet; and I remember that at a certain period the idea of food became
utterly revolting.  It is doubtless a question of nervous hyperaesthesia;
as is well known, over-indulgence in alcohol and certain other drugs tends
to destroy the appetite.  Inexperienced practitioners, insufficiently
grounded in physiology and philosophy, may perhaps be excused (though of
course reproved) for misunderstanding the import of the phenomena.  One is
inclined to say, "Now that I am becoming holy, I find that I dislike the
idea of eating: Argal, eating is unholy; and it will help me to become
still holier if I resolutely suppress the squeals of appetite."  Such, I
believe, is the basis of much of the fantastic morality which has muddled
mystical teaching throughout history.  I do not think that straightforward
a priori considerations would have carried unquestioning conviction in the
absence of apparent confirmation of their hypotheses.
     This "confusion of the planes" is in my opinion the chief cause of
failure to attain.  It is constantly cropping up in all sorts of
connections.  The aspirant must be armed with the Magical Sword, dividing
asunder the joints of the marrow of every observation that he makes.  A
single unanalysed idea is liable to obsess him and send him astray: "It may
be for years and it may be for ever."  He must never weary of assigning its
exact limitations to every phenomenon.  History, by the way, is full of
examples of this error 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 the
adulterated sacrifices with which her modern ministers pretend that they
can cozen her.
     I attribute my own success in mysticism and Magick, and the much
greater success that I have been able to secure for my successors, almost
entirely to my scientific training.  It enabled me to determine the actual
physiological and psychological conditions of attainment.  My experience as
a teacher enables me to simplify more and more as each fresh case comes
under my notice.  I can put my finger more quickly and surely on the spot
with every waxing moon.  I achieved in eleven years what hardly anyone
before had done in forty, and it cannot be explained by individual genius,
for I have been able to take men with hardly a scrap of talent and teach
them what took me eleven years in seven or eight for the firstcomers, in
five or six for their successors, and so on till, at the present moment, I
feel able to promise any man or woman of average ability who has the germ
of genuine aspiration, the essence of attainment within eight sessions.  Of
course it

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depends on each postulant to determine the details.  Some departments of
occult science lie outside the scope of particular people; each one must
fill in for himself his personal programme.  But the supreme emancipation
is the same in essence for all, and for the first time in history it has
been possible to present this free from confusion, so that people can
concentrate from the very beginning of their training on the one thing that
matters.
     Our life was delightfully simple.  Allan taught me the principles of
Yoga; fundamentally, there is only one.  The problem is how to stop
thinking; for the theory is that the mind is a mechanism for dealing
symbolically with impressions; its construction is such that one is tempted
to take these symbols for reality.  Conscious thought, therefore, is
fundamentally false and prevents one from perceiving reality.  The numerous
practices of yoga are simply dodges to help one to acquire the knack of
slowing down the current of thought and ultimately stopping at altogether.
This fact has not been realized by the yogis themselves.  Religious
doctrines and sentimental or ethical considerations have obscured the
truth.  I believe I am entitled to the credit of being the first man to
understand the true bearings of the question.
     I was led to this discovery chiefly through studying comparative
mysticism.  For instance; a Catholic repeats Ave Maria rapidly and
continuously; they rhythm inhibits the intellectual process.  The result is
an ecstatic vision of Mary.  The Hindu repeats Aum Hari Aum in the same way
and gets a vision of Vishnu.  But I noticed that the characteristics of
both visions were identical save for the sectarian terminology in which the
memory recorded them.  I argued that process and result were identical.  It
was a physiological phenomenon and the apparent divergence was due to the
inability of the mind to express the event except by using the language of
worship which was familiar.
     Extended study and repeated experiment have confirmed this conviction.
I have thus been able to simplify the process of spiritual development by
eliminating all dogmatic accretions.  To get into a trance is of the same
order of phenomena as to get drunk.  It does not depend on creed.  Virtue
is only necessary in so far as it favours success; just as certain diets,
neither right nor wrong in themselves, are indicated for the athlete or the
diabetic.  I am proud of having made it possible for my pupils to achieve
in months what previously required as many years.  Also, of having saved
the successful from the devastating delusion that the intellectual image of
their experience is an universal truth.
     This error has wrought more mischief in the past than any other.
Mohammed's conviction that his visions were of imperative importance to
"salvation" made him a fanatic.  Almost all religious tyranny springs from
intellectual narrowness.  The spiritual energy derived from the high
trances makes the seer a formidable force; and unless he be aware that his
interpretation is

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due only to the exaggeration of his own tendencies of thought, he will seek
to impose it on others, and so delude his disciples, pervert their minds
and prevent their development.  He can do good only in one way, that is by
publishing the methods by which he attained illumination: in other words,
by adding his experience to the sum of scientific knowledge.  I have myself
striven strenuously to do this, always endeavouring to make it clear that
my results are of value only to myself, and that even my methods may need
modification in every case, just as each poet, golfer and barrister must
acquire a style peculiar to his idiosyncrasies.
     Yoga, properly understood, is thus a simple scientific system of
attaining a definite psychological state.  Consider its Eight Branches!
Yama and Niyama, "Control" and "Super-control", give rules for preventing
the mind from being disturbed by moral emotions and passions, such as
anger, fear, greed, lust and the like.
     Asana, "position", is the art of sitting perfectly still, so that the
body can no longer send messages to the mind.  Pranayama, "control of
breath force", consists in learning to breathe as slowly, deeply and
regularly as possible.  The slightest mental irritation or excitement
always makes one breathe quickly and unevenly; thus one is able to detect
any disturbance of calm by observing this system.  Also, by forcibly
controlling the breath one can banish such ideas.  Also one reduces to a
minimum the consciousness that one is breathing.
     One may remark at this point that such precaution seems absurd; but
until one begins to try to keep the mind from wandering, one has no
conception of the way in which the minutest modifications of thought,
impressions which are normally transitory or unperceived, form the starting
point for Odysseys of distraction.  It may be several minutes before one
wakes up to the fact that one's wits have gone wool-gathering.
     Pratyahara is introspection.  One obtains the power of analysing an
apparently simple thought or impression into its elements.  One can, for
example, teach oneself to feel separately the numberless impressions
connected with the act of crooking one's fingers.  This is a revelation in
itself; so simple a muscular movement is found to contain an epic of
deliciously exciting ingredients.  The idea is, of course, not to enjoy
such pleasures, subtle and exquisite as they are; but by analysing thoughts
and impressions to detect their prodromal symptoms and nip them in the bud.
Also, to understand and estimate them by detailed examination.  One
important result of this is to appreciate the unimportance and equivalence
of all thoughts, very much as modern chemistry has put and end to the
medieval nonsense about the sacredness of some compounds and the wickedness
of others.  Another is to give one a clear and comprehensive view of the
elements of the universe as a whole.

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     Dharana, concentration, is now easier to practise.  One has learnt
what interruptions to expect and how to prevent them.  We, therefore, make
a definite attack on the multiplicity of thoughts by fixing the mind on
one.  In my "Book Four," Part I, I have copied from my diary at this period
an attempt at classification of invading ideas.  I am very proud of this
apparently simple observation and it will aid the reader to understand my
work in Kandy if I insert it.

          "Breaks" are classed as follows:
          "Firstly," physical sensations.  These should have been overcome by
     Asana.
          "Secondly," breaks that seem to be dictated by events immediately
     preceding the meditation.  Their activity becomes tremendous.  Only by
     this practice does one understand how much is really observed by the
     senses without the mind becoming conscious of it.
          "Thirdly," there is a class of breaks partaking of the nature of
     reverie or "daydreams".  These are very insidious --- one may go on
     for a long time without realizing that one has wandered at all.
          "Fourthly," we get a very high class of break, which is as sort of
     aberration of the control itself.  You think, "How well I am doing
     it!" or perhaps that it would be rather a good idea if your were on a
     desert island, or if your were in a sound-proof house, or if your were
     sitting by a waterfall.  But these are only trifling variations from
     the vigilance itself.
          "A fifth class of breaks" seems to have no discoverable source in
     the mind.  Such may even take the form of actual hallucination,
     usually auditory.  Of course, such hallucinations are infrequent and
     are recognized for what they are; otherwise the student had better see
     his doctor.  The usual kind consists of odd sentences or fragments of
     sentences, which are heard quite distinctly in a recognizable human
     voice, not the student's own voice or that of any one he knows.  A
     similar phenomenon is observed by wireless operators, who call such
     messages "atmospherics".
          There is "a further kind of break, which is the desired result"
     "itself."  It must be dealt with later in detail.

     Dhyana is the name of the first trance.  By trance I mean a state of
consciousness definitely distinct from the normal.  Its characteristic is
that whereas in normal consciousness two things are always present --- the
percipient and the perceived --- in Dhyana these two have become one.  At
first this union usually takes place with explosive violence.  There are
many other characteristics; in particular, time and space are abolished.
This, however, occurs with almost equal completeness in certain states of
normal abstract thought.

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     The attainment of this trance is likely to upset the whole moral
balance of the student.  He often attributes and exaggerated importance to
the imperfect ideas which represent his memory of what happened.  He cannot
possibly remember the thing itself, because his mind lacks the machinery of
translating it into normal thought.  These ideas are naturally his pet
delusions.  They seem to him to have become armed with supreme spiritual
sanction, so he may be come a fanatic or a megalomaniac.  In my system the
pupil is taught to analyse all ideas and abolish them by philosophical
skepticism before he is allowed to undertake the practices which lead to
Dhyana.
     Samadhi, "Union with the Lord", is the general term for the final
trance, or rather, series of trances.  It differs from Dhyana in this way:
Dhyana is partial, Samadhi is universal.  In the first Samadhi, the
universe is perceived as a unity.  In the second that unity is annihilated.
There are, however, may other Samadhis, and in any case the quality of the
trance will depend upon the extent of the universe which enters into it.
One must really be a profound philosopher with a definite intellectual
conception of the universe as an organic whole, based on the co-ordination
of immense knowledge, before one can expect really satisfactory results.
The Samadhi of an ignorant and shallow thinker who has failed to co-
ordinate his conceptions of the cosmos will not be worth very much.











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                              29



     The general idea of Eastern religions is that any manifestation of
being is necessarily imperfect, since it is not the sum of all truth.
(For, if it were, it would not be distinguishable from any other
manifestation).  Hence, its nature is evil and its effect on the mind to
create sorrow.  Their idea is to destroy all thought as being false and
painful.  Their idea is liberation from the illusion of existence.  The
effect of Samadhi is firstly to produce the bliss which comes from the
relief from pain.  Later, this bliss disappears and one attains perfect
indifference.
     But we need not go so far into their philosophy or accept it.  Thanks
partly to William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience," I got the idea
ofemploying the methods of Yoga to produce genius at will.  James points
out that various religious teachers attained their power to influence
mankind in hat is essentially the same way; that is, by getting into
Samadhi.  The trance gives supreme spiritual energy and absolute self-
confidence; it removes the normal inhibitions to action.  I propose then
that any man should use this power to develop his faculties and inspire his
ambitions by directing the effects of the trance into the channel of his
career.  This idea at once connects mysticism with Magick; for one of the
principal operations of Magick is to invoke the god appropriate to the
thing you want, identify yourself with Him and flood your work with His
immaculate impulse.  This is, in fact, to make Samadhi with that God.  The
two processes are essentially identical; the apparent difference arises
merely from the distinction between the European and Asiatic conceptions of
the cosmos.  Most European religion, including orthodox Judaism, is
anthropomorphic, an expansion of the moral ideas connected with the members
of a family.  Asiatic religions1, even when superficially theistic, always
imply an impersonal universe.  One idealized human forces; the other, the
forces of nature.
     The diary describing my practices had been printed in "The Equinox,"
vol. I, no. IV.  It is very fortunate that it should have been kept in such
detail, for it is a matter for surprise that such progress should have been
made in so short a time.  But I started with several great advantages:
youth, indomitable determination to devote every energy to the work, a
technical training under Eckenstein, and the constant presence of one to
whom I could immediately submit any issue that might arise.
     It is unnecessary to describe in detail the results of these
practices.  Some of

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        1  Including the oldest Greek religion in its best aspects.
















them, interesting and perhaps important in themselves, do not mean much  to
the layman.  It will be well, nevertheless, to indicate some of the major
phenomena.
     One soon obtains new conception of  one's own mind.  Till one has
practised, one has no idea of the actual contents.  The fact is that the
uninitiate is aware only of the solutions of his mental equations; he is
not conscious of the rough working.  Further, he does not feel the actual
impression made by each individual impact upon the mind.  He totally
mistakes its character, which is, in reality, arbitrary and imperative.
The first analysis shows it as out of relation with its predecessors and
successors.  Later on, one discovers the subconscious links which join the
elements.  This process of subdivision seems as if it might be continued
indefinitely.
     I will try and make matters clearer by an illustration.  The normal
man looking form the top of the Jungfrau sees Monta Rosa, the Matterhorn,
the Dent Blanche and other high peaks, all the way to Mont Blanc, sticking
up out of the morning mists.  The appear to him isolated phenomena.  The
mists clear and he becomes aware that these peaks are the summits of a
range; they are joined by a ridge rising to lesser peaks and falling to
passes.  But these secondary irregularities are themselves based on smaller
ones, and even on a level glacier on finds that the surface is not uniform;
each separate crystal of snow may be further examined and we hind even in
it an arrangement of elements salient and re-entrant, which is comparable
to the original macroscopic view.  Acquaintance with this phenomenon leads
one to inquire into the ultimate nature of the atoms of thought.  Each atom
assumes an importance equal to that of the others.  One's sense of values
is completely destroyed.
     There is also the problem: how is it that one's idea of a horse, for
example, should be composed of a set of ideas, none of which have any
apparent relation with it, exactly as the word horse itself is composed of
the letters h-o-r-s-e, none of which, by itself, suggests a horse, or part
of one, in any way?  Similarly, a lump of sugar is not merely a mass of
homogeneous crystals, but each crystal is composed of carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen, elements which in themselves possess none of the characteristic
qualities of sugar.  One perceives that mental and physical phenomena share
this irrationality.
     It will be seen from the above remarks that a very superficial
investigation of thought leads inevitably to the most revolutionary
consequences.  At this time, however, I was not sufficiently advanced to
perceive the full implications of these discoveries.  My record contents
itself with noting the mere symptoms produced by the practices.  Even
before leaving Colombo, I had heard the astral bell, to which so much
factitious importance has been given.  I had also purified what are called
the Nadi.  My complexion

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became strangely clear; my voice had lost the harsh timbre natural to it;
my appearance had become calm; my eyes unusually bright; and I was
constantly conscious of what is called the Nada, which is a sound the
character of which varies considerably, but in my case most frequently
resembled the twittering of nightingales.
     Pranayama produced, firstly, a peculiar kind of perspiration;
secondly, an automatic rigidity of the muscles; and thirdly, the very
curious phenomenon of causing the body, while still absolutely rigid, to
take little hops in various directions.  It seems as if one were somehow
raised, possibly an inch fro the ground, and deposited very gently a short
distance away.
     I saw a very striking case of this at Kandy.  When Allan was
mediating, it was my duty to bring his food very quietly (from time to
time) into the room adjoining that where he was working.  One day he missed
two successive meals and I thought I ought to look into his room to see if
all was well.  I must explain that I have known only two European women and
three European men who could sit in the attitude called Padmasana, which is
that usually seen in seated images of the Buddha.  Of these men, Allan was
one.  He could knot his legs so well that, putting his hands on the ground,
he could swing his body to and fro in the air between them.  When I looked
into his room I found him, not seated on his meditation mat, which was in
the centre of the room at the end farthest from the window, but in a
distant corner ten or twelve feet off, still in his knotted position,
resting on his head and right shoulder, exactly like an image overturned.
I set him right way up and he came out of this trance.  He was quite
unconscious that anything unusual had happened. But he had evidently been
thrown there by the mysterious forces generated by Pranayama.
     There is no doubt whatever about this phenomenon; it is quite common.
But the yogis claim that the lateral motion is due to lack of balance and
that if one were in perfect equilibrium one would rise directly in the air.
I have never seen any case of levitation and hesitate to say that it has
happened to me, though I have actually been seen by others on several
occasions apparently poised in the air.  For the first three phenomena I
have found no difficulty in devising quite simple physiological
explanations.  But I can form no theory as to how the practice could
counteract the force of gravitation, and I am unregenerate enough to allow
this to make me sceptical about the occurrence of levitation.  Yet, after
all, the stars are suspended in space.  There is no a priori reason why the
forces which prevent them rushing together should not come into operation
in respect of the earth and the body.
     Again, you can prevent things from biting you by certain breathing
exercises.  Hold the breath in such a way that the body becomes
spasmodically rigid, and insects cannot pierce the skin.  Near my bungalow
at Kandy was a waterfall with a pool.  Allan Bennett used to feed the
leeches every morning.

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At any moment he could stop the leech, though already fastened to his
wrist, by this breathing trick.  We would put our hands together into the
water; his would come out free, mine with a dozen leeches on it.  At such
moments I would bitterly remark that a coyote will not eat a dead Mexican;
but it failed to annoy him.
     On the shores of the lake stands a charmingly situated hotel.  We used
occasionally to go down there for a meal.  It is some distance by road, so
I used to take the short cut through the jungle.  One day I had run down
the hill at the top of my speed in my mountain boots, followed by a
breathless servant.  He arrived at the hotel ten minutes later with a dead
cobra, four feet eight inches in length.  I had come down with my heel
right on his neck and never noticed it!
     Asana was for a long time extremely painful.  It sometimes cost me
five minutes' acute agony to straighten my limbs at the end of the
practice.  But success came at last.  Quite suddenly I lost consciousness
of my body.  The effect was that of relief from long-continued suffering.
Until that moment I had thought of my Asana as the one really painful
position.  This idea was reversed; it became the only position in which I
was free from bodily discomfort.  To this day, though shamefully out of
practice, I am able to obtain the benefit of a long rest by assuming the
position for a few minutes.
     The phenomena of concentration are very varied and curious.  For
instance, the suppression of one's normal thoughts leads to their being
replaced, not only by their elements, as explained above, but by long
forgotten memories of childhood.  There are also what I have called
"atmospherics".  For instance, a voice is suddenly heard, "And if you're
passing, won't you?" or "And not take the first step on virtue's giddy
road."  One of the entries on September 6th is worth quoting verbatim:

  10:45-10:55  Dharana on tip of nose.  I obtained a clear understanding
   P.M.        of the unreality of that nose.  This persists.  An hour
               later whilst breathing on my arm as I was asleep, I said to
               myself, "What is this hot breath from?"  I was forced to
"               "think" before I could answer "my nose".  Then I pinched
               myself and remembered at once; but again breathing, the same
               thing happened again.  Therefore the"Dharanization" of my
               nose dividualizes me and my nose, affects my nose, disproves
               my nose, abolishes, annihilates and expunges my nose.

     I was very alarmed one day to find that I had completely lost the
object of concentration.  I could not think what I wished to find or where
to find it.  I naturally thought something was very wrong.  Here was an
occasion when Allan's experience proved invaluable.  Without it, I might
have been

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frightened into giving up the practice.  But he told me the result was
good, showing that I was approaching the state of what is called
"neighbourhood concentration".
     Another experience was this: I found myself at one and thee same
moment conscious of external things in the background after the object of
my concentration had vanished, and also conscious that I was "not" conscious
of these things.  To the normal mind this is of course sheer contradiction,
but Buddhist psychology mentions this peculiar state.  The higher faculties
of the intelligence are not subject to the same laws as the lower.
     I continually increased the number of hours which I devoted to my
work.  On October 2nd, to my amazement, I was successful in reaching the
state of Dhyana.  The experience was repeated on the following day.  I
quote the record verbatim:

          After some eight hours' discipline by Pranayama arose "the Golden
     Dawn".
          While meditating, suddenly I became conscious of a shoreless
     space of darkness and a glow of crimson athwart it.  Deepening and
     brightening, scarred by dull bars of slate-blue cloud, arose the Dawn
     of Dawns.  In splendour not of earth and its mean sun, blood-red,
     rayless, adamant, it rose, it rose!  Carried out of myself, I asked
     not "Who is the witness?" absorbed utterly in contemplation of so
     stupendous and so marvellous a fact.  For there was no doubt, no
     change, no wavering; infinitely more real than aught physical is the
     Golden Dawn of this Eternal Sun!  But ere the Orb of Glory rose clear
     of its banks of blackness --- alas my soul! --- that Light Ineffable
     was withdrawn beneath the falling veil of darkness, and in purples and
     greys glorious beyond imaging, sad beyond conceiving, faded the superb
     Herald of the Day.  But mine eyes have seen it!  And this, then, is
     Dhyana!  Whit it, yet all but unremarked, came a melody as of the
     sweet-souled Vina.

Next day:

          Again, by the grace Ineffable of Bhavani to the meanest of Her
     devotees, arose the Splendour of the Inner Sun.  As bidden by my guru,
     I saluted the Dawn with Pranava.  This, as I foresaw, retained the
     Dhyanic consciousness.  The Disk grew golden; rose clear of all its
     clouds, flinging great fleecy cumuli of rose and gold, fiery with
     light, into the aethyr of space. Hollow it seemed and rayless as the
     Sun in Sagittarius, yet incomparably brighter: but rising clear of
     cloud, it began to revolve, to coruscate, to throw off streamers of
     jetted fire!  (This from a hill-top I held, dark as of a dying world.
     Covered with black decayed wet peaty wood, a few pines stood stricken,

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     unutterably alone.) (Note. This is a mere thought form induced by
     misunderstanding the instruction of Mƒitrƒnanda Swami as to observing
     the phenomenon.)  But behind the glory of its coruscations seemed to
     shape an idea, less solid than a shadow! an Idea of some Human seeming
     Form!  Now grew doubt and thought in P's miserable mind; and the one
     Wave grew many waves and all was lost!  Alas!  Alas! for P!  And Glory
     Eternal unto Her, She the twin-Brested that hath encroached even upon
     the other half of the Destroyer! "OM Namo Bhƒvaniya OM."

     The result of this attainment was what I should least have expected.
I was not encouraged to proceed; it seemed as if I had used up the
accumulated energy of years.  I found it impossible to force myself to
continue.  It was nearly two years before I resumed any regular practice.
     The immediate current being thus exhausted, we decided to go on a
pilgrimage to the ruined sacred cities of Buddhism.  Allan had become more
and more convinced that he ought to take the Yellow Robe.  The phenomena of
Dhyana and Samadhi had ceased to exercise their first fascination.  It
seemed to him that they were insidious obstacles to true spiritual
progress; that their occurrence, in reality, broke up the control of the
mind which he was trying toe establish and prevented him from reaching the
ultimate truth which he sought.  He had the strength of mind to resist the
appeal of even these intense spiritual joys.  Like physical love, they
persuade their dupe to put up with the essential evil of existence.
     As for myself, I had become impatient with the whole business.  Dhyana
had washed my brain completely out.  I went on this pilgrimage in a
entirely worldly frame of mind.  My interests were in aesthetic, historical
and ethnological matters, and in incidents of travel amid new scenes.  I
even took a somewhat demoniac delight in sceptical and scurrilous comment
upon current events for the sheer joy of shocking Allan, and even in
horrifying him by occasional excursions after big game.  I may as well go
back a little in time and record my general impressions of Ceylon as a man
of the world, in connected sequence.
     I was as full of romantic folly about the wisdom of the East, and the
splendours and luxuries of Asia, as I had been about Jacobites.  But
already I had learnt to use my eyes; prejudices had somehow lost their
power to persuade.  My experience of the Order probably counted for a good
deal in this.  At the same time, I did not swing from one extreme to the
other.  "Blessed are they that expect nothing; for they shall not be
disappointed!"  I was in no danger of judging the principles of Buddhism by
the practices of Buddhists.  I worked out the logical consequences of any
philosophy without reference to the criticisms of history.  The Buddhism of
Ceylon is

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based on the canon of their scriptures.  But the customs of the people have
been for the most part adapted to the new religion; very much as paganism
persisted unchanged, except as to terminology, when it was camouflaged by
Christianity; just as the ass of Priapus became the ass of the Nativity; as
Jupiter became Jehovah; Isis, Mary; and so on; as the crown of Osiris
developed into the papal tiara; as the feats of corn and wine were resumed
in the Eucharist, so did the old rites of fetish and ancestor worship
continue under new names.  The old demonology was adapted to Buddhist
theories.
     The primitive instincts of people are ineradicable; their passions and
fears always find approximately the same expression, despite the efforts of
philosophers and religious reformers.  So I was neither surprised nor
shocked (as was the more ingenuous Allan) at the devil dances and similar
superstitious practices which pretended to be a part in the pure rational
and straightforward spirituality of Buddhism.  The very simplicity and
savagery of these practices were pleasing.  The enthusiasm was sincere;
there was no hypocrisy, no humbug, no sanctimoniousness, no protestations
of virtue or assumptions of superiority.
     The supreme glory of Kandy is an alleged tooth of the Buddha.  It is
enclosed in seven concentric caskets, some of which are enormously valuable
and beautiful.  Gold an jewels are nothing accounted of.  Some years before
my visit, one of these caskets had been stolen.  The King of Siam provided
a new one at the cost of an incredible number of lakhs of rupees.  He made
a journey to Kandy with his retinue in great pomp to make the presentation
in person and the priests refused to allow him to see the tooth!  It was a
magnificent piece of impudence --- of of policy.  My own Unpretentious
Holiness met with better fortune.  Allan and I were permitted to be present
at the annual inspection by the trustees.  I believe the tooth to be that
of a dog or crocodile, but though I got an excellent view at close
quarters, I am not anatomist enough to be positive.  I am, however, quite
certain that it is not a human tooth.
     Homage is paid to this relic every year at a ceremony called the
Perahera.  I was not impressed by the sanctity of the proceedings; but as a
spectacle it is certainly gorgeous.  The very wildness and lack of
appropriateness add to its charm.  The processions to which we are
accustomed in Europe and America are all so cleverly though out that the
effect is merely to irritate.  The Perahera is a gigantic jollification;
they bring out all their elephants, dancers, monks, officials, drums,
horns, torches --- anything that makes a blaze of a noise, and let them all
loose at once.  The effect is of impromptu excitement.  Poor, serious,
single-minded Allan, with his whole soul set on alleviating the sufferings
of humanity and helping them to reach a higher plane of existence, was
saddened and disillusioned.
     One incident was somewhat scandalously amusing.  He was doing his

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best to enter into the spirit of the thing and called my attention to the
"strains of wild oriental music".  I knew better.  I had read Herrick's
poem abut the young lady who left a glove in the royal presence, and
remembered that Lady Clara de Vere de Vere has certain physiological
properties in common with the elephant.  Poor Allan was absolutely
horrified when he realized his mistake.
     The scene was wild and somewhat sinister.  The darkness, the palms,
the mountainous background, the silent lake below, the impenetrable canopy
of space, studded with secretive and significant stars, formed a stupendous
setting for the savage noise and blaze of the ceremony.  One half saw huge
shadowy shapes moving mysteriously in the torchlight, and the air vibrated
violently with the jubilant rage of riotous religious excitement.  It
communicated a sort of magnificent madness to the mind.  One didn't know
what it meant or if it meant anything particular.  One was not hampered by
knowledge; one could let oneself go.  One felt a tense, tremendous impulse
to do something demoniac. Yet one had no idea what.  It put one's nerves on
the rack.  It was almost a torture to feel so intensely, and desire so
deliriously, such unintelligible irritations.  Hours passed in this
intoxicating excitement.  One can understand perfectly the popular
enthusiasm.  It was the release of the subconscious desires of the original
animal.  To a civilized mind, accordingly, the impression was charged with
a certain disquietude partaking of the nature of terror without
understanding why; one felt the presence of forces which appal because one
feels their power, recognizes their existence in oneself.  They are the
things one has tried to forget and persuaded oneself that they are in fact
forgotten.  They are the voices of ancestral appetite.  It is the roar of
the mob in the ears of the educated: but as for any definite religious
impression, the Perahera had nothing to say.  It was no more Buddhism than
the carnival at Nice is Christianity.  Iota Omega  Pi Alpha Nu !
     But the matter does not end there.  Official science, which can always
be relied upon to discover at last what everybody has always known, has
just proclaimed the fact that certain states of mind possess the property
of performing what used to be called miracles, and that such states may be
evoked by the constant repetition of formulae and similar practices.  The
whole of Eastern ceremonies, from the evolutions of dancing girls to the
austerities of ascetics, have all been devised with the intention of
inducing the right medium for the right sort of subconsciousness to rise,
move and appear.
     Zodacare, eca, od zodameranu!  Odo kikal‚ Qaa!  Zodoreje, lap‚
Zodiredo Noco Mada, Hoathah‚ IAIDA!






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                              30


     We came into contact, on one occasion, with the relations between the
people and the government.  The British official in Ceylon is a very
different person from his Indian colleague.  He is not "heaven-born" in the
same consecrated and ineluctable way.  He has failed to convince himself of
his superiority to mere created beings; so his airs of authority do not
become him.  He feels himself a bit of an upstart.  Ceylon is full of half-
casts, Dutch, English and Portuguese, and the white man feels himself
somehow compromised by their presence.  They remind him of his poor
relations and make him feel as the inhabitants of Dayton, Tennessee, and
some others do in a monkey-house.  A similar situation exists in the
southern states of America, where the pure whites are outnumbered by the
negroes, and where a large population of mixed blood provides the logical
link.  In south Africa, again, we find the same situation; and the
practical result is that the white man, feeling his footing insecure, dares
not tolerate the native as he can in India, where the relations between the
population and the conquering invader are understood by both parties.  The
Singalese government is inclined to be snappish.
     One evening Allan and I were meditating, as usual.  The servants were
absent for some reason; some marauder took the opportunity to break in and
steal my cash box.  I am ashamed to say that I was stupid enough to report
the incident to the police.  A day or two later an alleged inspector
appeared, made various inquiries and went off.  He took with him my pocket
compass, under the impression that it was my watch!  This time, of course,
we could identify the thief, who had been playing this game all over the
island.  He was caught and put in the dock; but escaped conviction on some
technicality.  But I remember the incident acutely on account of the
conversation I had with the magistrate, who explained that the man might be
flogged for this offence.  He spoke of the punishment with a shudder --- it
was terrible to witness; but his tones displayed intense sadistic pleasure
at the idea.  It was my first glimpse of the bestial instincts of the
average respectable and cultured Englishman.  I had not really believed
what I had read in Krafft-Ebing about perverse pleasures of this sort; I
could not understand cruelty.
     Is it Gorky who tells us the at the universal characteristic of the
Russian is to delight in the infliction of pain for its own sake, in the
absence of any comparatively intelligible basis like anger and hatred?  He
describes how men's mouths are filled with gunpowder and exploded, how
women's breasts are pierced, ropes inserted and the victim left to hang
from the

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ceiling.  These things are done exactly as English children sometimes
torture animals.  He says that the whole of this life has been poisoned by
realizing the existence of this instinct, which seemed to him a fatal
objection to any possible justification of the universe.  I cannot follow
him so far.  I can understand that every possible combination of qualities
may exist somewhere and that I have no right even to assume that my own
detestation of such things proves them to be unjustifiable.
     I really rather agree with "Greenland's Icy Mountains", though I
object to accepting Ceylon on the penultimate.  But certainly every
prospect is remarkably pleasing and, as far as I saw, every man is vile.
There seems to be something in the climate of the island that stupefies the
finer parts of a man if he lives there too long.  The flavour of the tea
seemed to me somehow symbolic.  I remember one day pleading with the local
shopkeeper to find me some Chinese tea.  It chanced that the owner of a
neighbouring plantation was in the shop.  He butted in, remarking
superciliously that he could put in the China flavour for me.  "Yes," I
said, "but can you take out the Ceylon flavour?"
     Before leaving Eckenstein, I had agreed to consider the question of an
Himalayan expedition, to Chogo Ri, marked "K2" on the Indian Survey, 28,250
feet, the second highest mountain in the world.  I decided not to go;
wishing to devote myself exclusively to spiritual progress.  I wrote to
this effect; but when I told Allan that I had done so, I found, to my
surprise, that he thought I ought to go for Eckenstein's sake.  It was the
same problem as that about Abra-Melin and the Order.  And I chose ion the
same way.  I wired Eckenstein that I would go.
     One of the results of this was that I began to grow a beard.
Eckenstein had put me up to a lot of the points of conduct that should be
observed in travelling among Mohammedans and I practised these
conscientiously.  For instance, I taught myself never to touch my face with
my left hand.  I found this practice tends to make my mind constantly
vigilant.  Later, I developed the idea into "Liber Jugorum," which is one of
the most important elements in the preliminary training for the A.'.
A.'..  But the Singalese, knowing nothing of our motives, could only
conclude that sahibs with beards must be Boer prisoners.  The same
ridiculous mistake was made even by the whites at Rawalpindi, when the
expedition arrived, though we were mixing freely with them and half our
party talking English slang.
     The fact is that the vast majority of people are absolutely impervious
to facts.  Test the average man by asking him to listen to a simple
sentence which contains one word with associations to excite his
prejudices, fears or passions --- he will fail to understand what you have
said and reply by expressing his emotional reaction to the critical word.
It was long before I understood this fact of psychology.  Even to this day,
it surprises me that there should be minds

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which are unable to accept any impression equably and critically.  I have
heard many great orators.  The effect has nearly always been to make me
wonder how they have the nerve to put forward such flimsy falsehoods.
     The excursion to the buried cities was an education in itself.  The
first impression was of the shocking callousness with which the coach
horses were treated.  There was not a single one along the whole route
which was even moderately sound.  I began to set its right value upon the
first precept of Buddha: Not to take life.  Ass!
     At Dambulla is one of the most extraordinary works of human skill,
energy and enthusiasm in the world.  The temple is a cave in the rock, of
vast extent but with a very small opening.  How could the many statues of
the Buddha which filled the cave have got there?  It was the camel and the
needle's eye again.  But what had been done was to cut away the rock of the
cave itself, leaving the statues.  So gigantic a conception and so
admirable an execution extort one's whole-hearted praise.  Nothing so
drives home the fact of modern degeneracy as this: not only are the
Singalese of today utterly incapable of creative work, but they are so far
fallen that they have piously smeared this superb statuary with thick coats
of gamboge so lavishly that the delicacy of the modelling is entirely
concealed.
     The rock Sigiri is very startling.  It sticks up out of the level
jungle without apology.  It is supposed to by unclimbable save by the
artificial gallery which was built of old when a city flourished on the
summit.  We hung about for some days, as I wanted to walk round the rock
and try and find a way up.  But the scheme was impracticable.  One could
not cut one's way through so many miles of thick jungle, and if one did one
would have to be a monkey to be sure of getting a view.
     The only incident was that I came across my first buffalo.  In the
course of a ramble, I had come out upon a clearing in the forest where
there was a shallow lake.  A bull with two cows arrived simultaneously from
the other side, in quest of a drink.  In those days I carried a Mauser
`303.  I got within a hundred yards before he took alarm.  As he raised his
head I aimed and fired.  The cartridge failed to explode and the bull
thundered past me before I could reload.  If he had been charging --- good
night!  I took the lesson to heart and always carried a double-barrelled
rifle ever after.  Apart from the extra time needed to lower a single-
barrelled rifle and manipulate the lever, which might well cause a fatal
delay, there is more than a possibility of a cartridge jamming, which would
leave one entirely unarmed.
     We jogged on wearily to Anuradapura.  This discomforts of the coach
were great, and the monotony of the view desolating.  It was all an endless
flat tangle of vegetation.  It was delightful to perceive, about sunset, a
number of hills in the distance.  Their graceful wooded slopes enchanted
the eye.  And this is the wonder of this journey, for in the morning I
found that these were

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not hills at all, but ruined dagobas, which time had fledged with forestry!
     To me these cities appear incomparably greater as monuments than even
those of Egypt.  They are not so sympathetic spiritually; they lack the
appeal of geometry and aesthetics which makes the land of Khem my spiritual
fatherland.  But one has to grant the gargantuan grandeur of the old
Singalese civilization.  Their idea, even of so pedestrian a project as a
tank, was simply colossal.  They though in acres where others think in
square yards.  One of the pagodas has for its lowest terrace --- I think it
is about a mile in circumference --- a ring of stone elephants little short
of life size.  Most of the ornamentation has perished, but the loss does
not really matter.  The point of the place is the prodigious piety which
erected these useless enormities merely as memorials to the Master.
     Frankly, I was fed up with marvels.  All subjects bore me alike after
a short time; they cease to stimulate.  I was thoroughly pleased to find
myself at last in India.  The psychological change from Ceylon is very
sudden, startling and complete.  What is there about an island which
differentiates it so absolutely from the adjoining mainland?  No amount of
similarity of race, customs and culture gets rid of insularity.  The moment
one sets foot in India, one becomes aware of the stability of its
civilization.
     I spent some weeks wandering through the southern provinces.  I cannot
forbear mentioning one charming incident.  At some station or other, I was
about to take the train.  A white man with a long white beard came down the
whole length of the train in the blazing sun to my carriage.  He had seen
that I was strange to the country and asked if he could be of any service.
(Unless one knows the ropes, one has to put up with a lot of petty
discomforts.)  The man was Colonel Olcott.  It was the first act of kindly
thoughtfulness that I had ever known a theosophist perform --- and the
last.  For many years.
     The rock temples of Madura are probably the finest in India, perhaps
in the world.  There seems no limit.  Corridor after corridor extends its
majestic sculptures, carved monoliths, with august austerity.  They are the
more impressive that the faith which created them is as vital today, as
when India was at the height of its political power.  My experiences of
Yoga stood me in good stead.  I knew, of course, that the average European
would not 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 himself a great
authority on Yoga.  He introduced me to the writings of Sabapati Swami,
whose instructions are clear and excellent,





















and his method eminently practical.  My friend introduced me to the
authorities at the bid temple at Madura, and I was allowed to enter some of
the secret shrines, in one of which I sacrificed a goat to Bhavani.
     The fact is that Buddhism had got on my nerves.  I preferred the
egocentric psychology of Hinduism --- naturally enough, since the
fundamental consciousness of the average European is sympathetic.  Our very
speech almost compels us to think of the universe in this way.  Ethically,
too, Hinduism appealed to me; it seemed positive; its injunctions seemed to
lead somewhere.  Buddhism repelled me by its abhorrence of action, its
insistence upon the idea of sorrow as inherent in all things in themselves.
Hinduism at least admits the existence of joy; the only trouble is that
happiness is unstable.  In practice, again, Buddhism suited Allan, whose
only idea of pleasure was relief from the perpetual pain which pursued him;
whereas I, with the world at my feet, was out to do something definite and
even to take delight in the buffetings of fortune.  I enjoyed this
adventure immensely' I felt myself all kinds of a fine fellow for
penetrating these sinister sanctuaries.
     To a young wizard waltzing round the world, some of the early
impressions of the India whose philosophy and religion he has learnt to
reverence so profoundly are a shade disconcerting.  I could not help
feeling the degradation of the woman who swept out the dak bungalow at
Madura.  She was a grotesque hag at thirty.  I had seen nothing of the kind
in Mexico, or, indeed, anywhere else before or since, till I struck the
back-blocks of the United States of America.  But in her time she had been
a woman of great wealth, for I could have put my hand and arm clean through
the lobe of her ear.  She must at one time have worn enormously heavy ear-
rings.
     Her attitude gave me a peculiar little shiver.  To sweep the floor,
which she did with a short-handled brush, she bent entirely from the hips,
being straight above an below.  It somehow gave me the impression of a
broken stick.  And then I was reminded of the queen's spaniel in "Zadig."
For in the dust of the floor were two tiny trails made by her sagging
breasts as they swung idly out of her cotton cloth.
     I had made a point from the beginning of making sure that my life as a
Wanderer of the Waste should not cut me off from my family, the great men
of the past.  I got India-paper editions of Chaucer, Shakespeare and
Browning; and, in default of India paper, the best editions of "Atalanta in"
"Calydon. Poems and Ballads" (First Series), Shelley, Keats and "The Kabbalah"
"Unveiled."  I caused all these to be bound in vellum, with ties.  William
Morris had re-introduced this type of binding in the hope of giving a
mediaeval flavour to his publications.  I adopted it as being the best
protection for books against the elements.  I carried these volumes
everywhere, and even when mu alleged waterproof rucksack was soaked
through, my masterpieces remained intact.

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     Let this explain why I should have been absorbed in Browning's
"Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day" at Tuticorin.  I was criticizing it in the
light of my experience in Dhyana, and the result was to give me the idea of
answering Browning's apology for Christianity by what was essentially a
parody of his title and his style.  My poem was to be called "Ascension Day
and Pentecost".
     I wrote "Ascension Day" at Madura on November 16th and 'Pentecost" the
day after; but my original idea gradually expanded.  I elaborated the two
poems from time to time, added "Berashith" --- of which more anon --- and
finally "Science and Buddhism", an essay on these subjects inspired by a
comparative study of what I had learnt from Allan Bennett and the writings
of Thomas Henry Huxley.  These four elements made up the volume finally
published under the title "The Sword of Song."
     One of the great sights of south India is the great temple of the
Shivalingam.  I spent a good deal of time in its courts meditating on the
mystery of phallic worship.  Apologists ordinarily base their defence on a
denial that the lingam is worshipped as such.  They claim correctly enough
that it is merely the symbol of the supreme creative spiritual force of the
Most High.  It is perfectly true, none the less, that barren women
circumambulate it in the hope of becoming fruitful.  I accepted this
sublimation gladly, because I had not yet been healed of the wound of
Amfortas: I had not got rid of the shame of sex.  My instinct told me that
Blake was right in saying "The lust of the goat is the glory of god."  But
I lacked the courage to admit it.  The result of my training had been to
obsess me with the hideously foul idea that inflicts such misery on Western
minds and curses life with civil war.  Europeans cannot face the facts
frankly; they cannot escape from their animal appetite, yet suffer the
tortures of fear and shame even while gratifying it.  As Freud has now
shown, this devastating complex is not merely responsible for most of the
social and domestic misery of Europe and America, but exposes the
individual to neurosis.  It is hardly too much to say that our lives are
blasted by conscience.  We resort to suppression and the germs created an
abscess.
     The Hindu is of course a slave to his superstitions about sin even
more than most nominal Christians, for the simple reason that he is
absolutely serious about the welfare of his soul.  I remember coming across
a tribe which did not use tobacco.  I offered them some and they refused.
I supposed it was forbidden by their religion, but they told me no.  It
was, however, not commanded by their religion; they could therefore see no
object in doing it.  The Hindu attitude towards sin, absurd as it is,
compares favourably with ours; because, though afraid of it, they have not
reached our own state of panic which makes us the prey of the most
fantastic superstitions and perversions of truth.  I have found it
practically impossible to convince middle-class

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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.
























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                              31


     In course of time I arrived at Madras, which is sleepy, sticky and
provincial.  On one of my steamship journeys I had met a delightful man
named harry Lambe, who had invited me to come and stay with him in
Calcutta.  It fitted in ideally and I booked my passage by the steamer
"Dupleix."  It would have been more natural to go by train; but part of my
plan in wandering about the world was to put myself in unpleasant
situations on purpose, provided that they were new.  This small French boat
offered an adventure.
     A storm was raging; the "Dupleix" was some days late, and when she
arrived, it was too rough for her to come into the harbour.  I had to row
out to her in an open boat.  I had dismissed my servant and was the only
passenger from shore.  I note the fact as showing that I had in a sense
broken with the past; the point will appear in a few paragraphs.
     The voyage was atrocious; the ship stank of oil, partly from the
engines, partly from the cooking and partly from the crew.  The storm
continued unabated.  We passed close to the lightship off the mouth of the
Hooghly in thick sea fog; the people on the lightship are often five weeks
or more without being able to communicate with the rest of the world.  But
we got a pilot on board somehow and once in the river itself the weather
cleared.
     The Hooghly is reputed the most difficult and dangerous navigation in
the world and its pilots are the best paid men afloat.  Ours allowed me to
spend part of the time with him on the bridge and put me up to the ropes.
The sandbanks are constantly shifting; even the shores alter from day to
day; the river suddenly chops off a large chunk of corner or throws up a
false bank.  A large staff of men is therefore constantly engaged in
sounding for the channel and putting up new signposts on the banks.  The
chart of the river has to be revised every day.  Even so, the channel is
narrow and tortuous.  The course of the ship reminded me of the most
elaborate Continental figureskating.
     Lambe was at the wharf to meet me and drove me off to his house, a
large building in a compound, as gardens surrounded by a wall are called in
India.  It was a colony of four men, with one of whom, Edward Thornton, I
soon struck up an intimacy based on implicit sympathy in the matter of
philosophical speculation.
     Before I had been in the house three days, a curious incident
occurred.  I am always absent-minded.  A current of thought flows through
the back of

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my brain quite independent of what I am consciously doing.  I might even
say that the above statement is incorrect.  Most of the time I am more
conscious of what I am thinking than of what I am saying and doing.  Now
there was an animated conversation at dinner about the absurdity of the
native mind; the curious ideas that they got into their heads; and I
"awoke" to hear someone say, as an illustration of this thesis, that the
servants of the house were very excited by my arrival because I had
penetrated into the temple at Madura and sacrificed a goat.  I had said
nothing to my friends about my interest in Magick and religion, and they
were much astonished when I told them that their servants were right.  I
explained how I had cut communications at Madras and wanted to know how the
servants could possibly have found out the facts.
     This let to conversation about the "native telegraph".  It is an
established fact that the bazaars get accurate information of events ahead
of electricity.  Mouth-to-mouth communication does not explain it.  For
instance, the death of an officer in a frontier skirmish in some place
isolated from India by long stretches of uninhabited country has been
reported in Bombay before the field telegraph has transmitted the news.
     But I was already sufficiently advanced in practical Magick to
understand how this could be done.  On one occasion I wanted to prepare a
ritual which involved the use of certain words which I did not know.  I
travelled in my astral body to see a brother of the Order whom I knew to be
in possession of the required information, eight thousand miles and more
away, and obtained it at once.
     My first business at Calcutta was to learn Hindustani and Balti, in
order to be an efficient interpreter on the expedition to Chogo Ri.  As
regards the latter, I had to content myself with the grammar and filed to
learn much.  Fortunately, we managed without it; but it was easy to get a
munshi to teach me Hindustani and I spent most of my time in acquiring that
language.
     The "native telegraph" now reappeared in a different form.  Somehow or
other my munshi got it into his head that I was a Magician.  This was very
curious, as I had done practically no Magick since landing in Ceylon and
certainly had not talked about it at all.  "The Sword of song" bears witness
to the completeness with which I had abandoned Magick.  I had not in the
least lost my faith in its efficacy: I regarded it very much as I regarded
rock climbing.  I could not doubt that I was the best rock climber of my
generation, but I knew that my abilities in that respect would not help me
to climb Chogo Ri any more than my ability at billiards would help me to
understand Dostoyevsky.  Similarly, my magical attainment had no bearing on
my Quest.  Of course I was wrong.  I had simply failed to understand the
possibilities of Magick.  I had not realized that it was the practical side
of spiritual progress.

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Ultimately, my Magick proved more far-reaching in importance than my
mysticism, as will appear in due course.
     My munshi must have possessed some secret source of information about
me.  His attitude towards me expressed not merely the servility of the
conquered race; it added the childlike timidity of primitive people in
presence of occult omnipotence.  Having ingratiated himself by all the arts
of the courtier, he plucked up courage to request me to kill his aunt.  I
am ashamed to say that I dissolved in laughter.  I no longer remember how I
kept my face; how I broke it to him gently that I killed strangers on on
such considerations as the uninitiated could not possibly comprehend.  I
still laugh to remember the shamefaced shyness of his request and the
pained humiliation with which he received my refusal.  He had the courage
(a week or so later) to ask me to soften the hearts of the examiners
towards his brother, who was entered for the B. A. examination; when I
refused, he asked me to prophesy the result.  I told him that his brother
would fail, which he did.  I claim no credit for second sight; I had based
my judgment on the reflection that if his brother required magical
assistance in order to pass, he knew that his intellectual attainments were
inadequate.
     When I wasn't working I went racing.  I had never been to a race
course in England.  I cannot force myself to pretend interest in a game of
which I do not know the rules.  Like all commercialized amusements, racing
is essentially crooked.  But in Calcutta it was less trouble to go than to
stay away.  I took advantage of the circumstances to test my theories.  One
particular horse had arrived in Calcutta with a great reputation.
Everybody backed it and it lost race after race.  I waited till it had
become so discredited that I could get long odds against it in an important
race, and then backed it to win, which it did.  It was merely a question of
following the psychology of the swindlers.  They had pulled it till it was
worth while to let it win.
     I had little real pleasure in rattling the rupees in my pocket.  My
cynical disgust with the corrupt pettiness of humanity, far from being
assuaged by the consciousness of my ability to outmanoeuvre it, saddened
me.  I loved mankind; I wanted everybody to be an enthusiastic aspirant to
the absolute.  I expected everybody to be as sensitive about honour as I
was myself.  My disillusionment drove me more and more to determine that
the only thing worth doing was to save humanity from the horror of its own
ignorant heartlessness.  But I was still innocent to the point of
imbecility.  I had not analysed human conduct: I did not understand in the
least the springs of human action.  Its blind bestiality was a puzzle which
appalled me, yet I could not even begin to estimate its elements.
     Allan Bennett had made up his mind to take the Yellow Robe --- not in
Ceylon, where the sodden corruption of the Sangha sickened his sincerity,
but in Burma, where the bhikkhus could at least boast fidelity to the
principles

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of the Buddha, and whose virtuous lives vindicated their good faith.  He
had gone to Akyab on the western coast of Burma, and was living in a
monastery called Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung.  I thought I would drop in on him
and pass the time of day; and proposed to combine with this act of
fraternity the adventure of crossing the Arakan hills, the range which
forms the watershed between the valley of the Irrawaddy and the sea.  This
journey, very short in measured miles, is reputed so deadly that it has
only been accomplished by very few men.  These left most of their party to
moulder in the mountains and themselves died within a few days of
completing the crossing.  I have always had this peculiar passion for
putting myself in poisonous perils.  Its source is presumably my congenital
masochism, and the "Travellers' Tales" of Paley Gardner had determined its
form of expression.
     Edward Thornton decided to join me on this expedition.  We sailed for
Rangoon on the twenty-first of January.  During the whole of my stay in
Calcutta I had been intermittently ill with malaria.  I had been reading
Deussen's exposition of Vedanta and found it utterly unsatisfactory.  Yet
Vendata is the fine flower of Hinduism, the sole solution of the problems
presented by the crude animism of the Vedas.  "And if these things are done
in the green tree --- ?" I was being forced, without knowing it, towards
Buddhism; my wish to see Allan again was doubtless due to this dilemma
rather than to any instincts of friendship.  As significant of the state of
my soul, vague yet vehement, I may quote certain entries in my diary thus:

     Jan. 13.  Early morning walk --- deep meditation.  Developed a sort of
               inverted Manichaeism.  Nature as evil and fatal force
               developing within itself (unwittingly) a suicidal will
               called Buddha or Christ.

     Jan. 15.  It is a fallacy that the absolute must be the all-good, etc.
               There is "not" an intelligence directing law --- line of least
               resistance.  Its own selfishness has not even the wit to
               prevent Buddha arising.  We cannot call nature "evil."
               "Fatal" is the exact word. Necessity implies stupidity ---
               this the chief attribute of nature.  As to "supreme
               intelligence", consider how many billion years were required
               to develop even so low a thing as emotion.

     The Rangoon River remains one of the deepest impressions of my life.
It reminded me of the Neva, though Petrograd is immensely more important.
But there is the same terrifying breadth of torrent, much more rapid and
turbulent than one expects from the limitless levels through which it
rushes; one gets the idea of sterile, heartless passion in the midst of a
wilderness, and somehow or other this seems obscenely unnatural.  One
instinctively associates vehemence with detailed result; and when one seen
such stupendous forces

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running to waste, one is subconsciously remended of the essence of human
tragedy, the callousness of nature about our craving to reap the reward of
our efforts.  One has to be a philosopher to endure the consciousness of
waste, and something more than a philosopher to admire the spendthrift
splendour of the universe.
     The glory of Rangoon is, of course, the Shwe Dagon pagoda.  It is
gilded and gigantic, and the effect is curiously annoying, for very much
the same reason as the river is appalling.  But it enables one to
understand the soul of Asia.  At the base of the dagoba is a vast circular
platform, ringed with shops, mostly dedicated to commercial piety and
cumbered with devotees, beggars and monsters.  It is the rendezvous of the
ragged, the diseased and the deformed, charity to whom is supposed to
confer "merit".  Merit means insurance against reincarnation in undesirable
conditions.  Among Buddhists, generally speaking, good deeds are always
done with some such objects.  A rich woman who is childless will plaster an
existing dagoba with gold leaf, or build a new one, in the hope of becoming
fruitful.
     The method by which this Magick is supposed to operate is somewhat
obscure.  There is no question of propitiating an offended deity in
canonical Buddhism; but in point of fact, it is probable that the custom is
a survival of pre-Buddhistic fetishism.  There are innumerable traces of
the old demonology in the practical life of the people.  Buddhism did not
succeed in supplanting prevailing superstitions any more than did
Christianity or Islam.  The fact is that the instincts of ignorant people
invariably find expression in some form of witchcraft.  It matters little
what the metaphysician or the moralist may inculcate; the animal sticks to
his subconscious ideas.
     On a litter in the shadow of the pagoda lay a boy of about fourteen
years.  He suffered from hydrocephalus.  An enormous head, horrifyingly
inane, surmounted a shrivelled body, too feeble even to support it.  There
indeed was a manifest symbol of the universe as conceived by the Buddha!
Senseless suffering proves that nature has no purpose or pity.  The
existence of a single item of this kind in the inventory demonstrates the
theorem.  As I gazed on the child, I began to understand that all the
syllogisms of optimism were enthymemes.  Every telology depends on the
error of generalizing from a few selected phenomena.  The boy impressed me
more than the pagoda.  One was the freak of misfortune; the other the
considered climax of colossal care.  Yet both were transitory and trivial
toys of time.  I went back to Rangoon profoundly penetrated by the insight
which enabled the Buddha to attain understanding of the import of the
cosmos.
     Ever since leaving Ceylon I had been almost constantly down with
malaria.  In Rangoon the fever assumed a remittent form: I lived on quinine
and iced champagne.  The persistence of the disease brought me to a state
in which I not longer struggled to recover my ordinary health.  I lived on
a low level,

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without desire even to die.  I began to understand the psychology of Allan.
My mind was abnormally clear: I was cleansed of the contamination of
desire.  Nothing was worth wishing for; I did not even complain of
suffering.  This state of mind is a useful experience.  Something very
similar can be induced artificially by fasting.
     I recovered quite suddenly, though the cachexia continued.  I was
quite well, but felt extraordinarily weak.  The curious thing about malaria
is that one seems to lack strength to life a finger, and yet one can do the
day's work with astonishing endurance.  One makes up one's mind that one
can't be any worse, and one's muscles are freed from the inhibition of
fatigue just as they are if one anaesthetizes oneself with cocaine.  I have
walked thirty-five miles in sweltering heat through the most difficult
jungle, carrying a heavy rifle, when I simply had not the strength to
swallow my breakfast.  One learns to live on a level of invalidism.  Most
Europeans accustomed to the tropics acquire this aptitude; they go on, year
after year, apathetically carrying out their routine.  They have got beyond
disappointment and ambition.
     I remember visiting a forest officer up country in Ceylon.  We dined
with him on the eternal monotony of chicken under various disguises and
canned meats.  Everything tastes alike.  He had no conversation; he tried
to entertain us by turning on a worn-out gramophone, as he had done to
relive his evenings ever since the instrument was invented.  He was an old
man and could have retired on his pension two years earlier, but he had
lost all interest in life.  What was the sense of his going to England?  He
had no friends, no family, no future!  He had become part of the jungle.
The psychology is common to all but men of rare intelligence and energy.
They cling childishly to the skirts of civilization by drearily dressing
fro their dreary dinner; but everything becomes formal and meaningless.
Unable to force an answer from the sphinx of their surroundings, they are
petrified into its stony silence, which yet does not share its sublimity
because it has neither shape nor soul.
     In order to cross the Arakans to Akyab, we obtained various
credentials from the authorities, especially a letter to the forest
commissioner of the district that he might provide us with elephants.  We
engaged a servant, a man from Madras, whose name was Peter.  The first
question one asks of a servant in India is: his religion?  Peter amused us
by replying that he was "a free man, a Roman Catholic".  Outside
subscribers to missionary societies, everyone is aware what is implied by
the term "native Christians".  Anyone who is such an absolute scoundrel as
to exceed the very wide latitude of his environment, who makes himself
intolerable to his family, friends and neighbours, cuts the painter and
"finds Jesus".  Conversion is a certificate of incorrigible rascality.  We
should not have taken a Christian if we could have found anyone else who
spoke English and Hindustani.  The inconceivable pettiness of the thefts

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of Peter was to me a revelation of the possibilities of human degradation.
It was combined with such cowardice of conscience that one could understand
easily why the "native Christian" invariably calls on his deathbed for the
minister of his original religion.






















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                              32




     On the twenty-fifth of January we left Rangoon for Prome.  Arrived at
Prome, we immediately went on board the steam ferry "Amherst."  It is a five
hours' journey to Thayetmyo, where we arrived in the heat of the day, after
a very pleasant journey, thanks partly to the beauty of the scenery, but
perhaps more to the geniality of the captain.  We got three bullock carts
for our transport and started the next morning, stopping at Natha for lunch
after a pleasant journey of ten miles.  After lunch we went off to
Kyoukghyi.
     The next day we resumed our journey; I walked most of the way and shot
some partridges and pigeons for lunch, which we took at Leh-Joung; this is
not a bungalow, but a village.  We went on in the afternoon to Yegyanzin,
where we had the good fortune to meet Garr, the forest commissioner of the
district, and his assistant Hopwood.  Unfortunately he was unable to give
me any elephants, as they were all in use; but told me I ought to have no
difficulty in getting coolies and probably ponies if I required them.  We
combined forces and had quite a nice dinner together.  One does not realize
how nice Englishmen really are until one meets them in out-of-the-way
places.  Sometimes not even then.
     The following day we went off again and arrived in Mindon at two
thirty p.m.  The road had become very bad; and, in the springless bullock
cart, travelling was by no means pleasant.  In fact, after two or three big
jolts we agreed to take turns to look out, and to give warning if a
particularly frightful jolt seemed imminent.  But for all our precautions,
I was badly let in on one occasion.  The road had become level, and
appeared to be the same for the next two hundred yards, so I turned back to
light a pipe.  Without a word of warning the driver swung round his oxen
off the road into an adjoining paddy field, at least three feet below, and
we got the nastiest shaking of our lives.  The last seven miles were
particularly irritating, as there was little or no shade, and it was out of
the question to relieve oneself by walking for more than a short distance.
     On arrival at Mindon, we summoned the headman and told him to get men
for the cross-country journey to Kyaukpyu.  He seemed to think it would be
rather difficult and was evidently not at all pleased with his orders, but
he went of to obey them, and in the meanwhile sent round the village
shikari so that I might go out after buffalo the next day.  I accordingly
started at six forty-five next morning.
     It soon began to get hot, and a double `577 is not the kind of toy one
wants

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to carry on a fifteen-mile tramp.  As a matter of fact, I probably did
nearer twenty miles than fifteen, as I was going eight hours with very
little rest.  We went up and down hills repeatedly, but thee wild buffalo
was shy, and, as a matter of fact, I did not the whole day see anything
whatever shootable, except some small birds which I took home for dinner.
In the afternoon we went off bathing together in a delightful pool directly
under the hill on which the bungalow was situated.  I took down the shout
gun with the intention of killing a big paddy bird which we saw from the
bank.  These birds are valuable on account of the aigrette.  I fired, but
my shot did not seem to hurt him, and he flew off.  I resigned the gun to
the Burmese boy, and had just finished my bath when the impudent beast came
back.  I hastily signalled for the gun; and putting on a topee and a towel
round my waist proceeded to stalk him across the ford.  I must have
presented the most ridiculous spectacle.  Thornton said he had not laughed
so much for years, and I daresay that the paddy bird laughed too; but I got
the best laugh in the end, for after about ten minutes' infinite pains I
got a close shot at him, which put an end to his career.  That evening we
tried to eat roast parrots, but it was a total failure.  I am told,
however, that parrot pie is quite a good dish; well, I don't like parrot,
so there will be all the more for those who do.
     The next day I was naturally feeling very tired; but in the afternoon
I summoned enough energy to go for a short stroll.  I was very anxious to
show Thornton a beautiful view of a hillside and river, which I had come
across on my way home.  We set out, he being armed with a sketch book and a
kukri, which he would always carry about with him, though I could never
understand the reason; if I had been anticipating the day's events, I
should not have troubled to inquire.  At the edge of the hill weariness
overtook me; I sat down, pointing to him a tiny path down the hill slope
which he was to pursue.  He was rather a long time returning, and I was
just about to follow in search when I heard his cooee; in a couple of
minutes he rejoined me.  I was rather surprised to see that his kukri was
covered with blood.  I said, "I knew you would fall over something one day.
Where have you cut yourself?"  He explained that he had not cut himself,
but that an animal had tried to dispute the path with him and that he had
hit it on the head, whereon the animal had rolled down the steep slopes
towards the river.  I could not make out from his description what kind of
an animal it could possibly be, but on examining the tracks I saw them to
be those of a nearly full-grown leopard.  We did not retrieve the body,
though it must have been mortally wounded, otherwise Thornton would hardly
have escaped so easily.
     The headman now returned and told us that he could not give us coolies
to cross the Arakan Hills, nobody had ever been there, and it was very
dangerous, and everyone who went there died, and all that sort of thing.
But

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he could give us men to go about twenty miles, and no doubt we should be
able to get more coolies there.  I thought there was more than a little
doubt; and, taking one thing with another, decided it would be best to give
up the idea and go instead back to the Irrawaddy down the Mindon Chong; we
consequently hired a boat of the dug-out type, about thirty-five feet long
and just broad enough for two men to pass; over the middle of the boat was
the usual awning.  The next morning we started down the stream, always
through the most delightful country and among charming people.
     All the villages in this part of the country are strongly fortified
with palisades of sharpened bamboos.  The voyage down the river was
exceedingly pleasant and the shooting delightful.  One could sit on the
stern of the boat and pot away all day at everything, from snipe to heron.
Our Burmese boys and the kites had great rivalry in retrieving the game.
The kites seemed to know that they would not be shot at.  I had another
slight attack of fever in the afternoon, but nothing to speak of.  We tied
up at Sakade for the night.  There was no dak bungalow near and one does
not sleep in a Burmese village unless necessity compels.  And yet

     By palm and pagoda enchaunted o'ershadowed, I lie in the light
     Of stars that are bright beyond suns that all poets have vaunted
     In the deep-breathing amorous bosom of forests of Amazon might,
     By palm and pagoda enchaunted.

     By spells that are murmured, and rays of my soul strongly flung,
          never daunted;
     By gesture and tracery traced with a wand dappled white,
     I summon the spirits of earth from the gloom they for ages have
          haunted.

     O woman of deep red skin!  Carved hair like the teak!  O delight
     Of my soul in the hollows of earth --- how my spirit hath taunted
          ...
     Away!  I am here, I am laid to the breast of the earth in the dusk
          of the night,
     By palm and pagoda enchaunted.

     This poem was inspired by an actual experience.  The effects of my
continued bouts of fever had been to make me spiritually sensitive.  The
jungle spoke to me of the world which lies behind material manifestation.
I perceived directly that every phenomenon, from the ripple of the river to
the fragrance of the flowers, is the language by which the subtle souls of
nature speak to our senses.  That night we were tied up under a teak tree,
and as I lay awake with my eyes fixed ecstatically on its grace  and
vigour, I found myself in the embraces of the Nat or elemental spirit of
the tree.  It was a woman vigorous and intense, of passion and purity so
marvellous that she abides with me after these many years as few indeed of
her

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human colleagues.  I passed a sleepless night in a continuous sublimity of
love.
     The early hours of the morning, in winter, are bitterly cold, and the
river is covered to a height of several feet with a dense white mist which
does not disappear till well after sunrise.
     I kept very quiet the next day, for repeated attacks of fever had
begun to interfere with my digestive apparatus.  Just as nightfall two deer
came down to drink at the river side.  It was rather dark for a shot and
the deer could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding foliage, but
the men very cleverly and silently held the boat and I let fly.  The result
was better than I expected. I hit exactly where I had aimed at and the deer
dropped like a stone.  Needless to say we had a first-class dinner.  We
slept at Singon that night.  There were a great many jungle fires during
this day and the next.  The next morning we started again early and I
resumed my bird shooting.  On the first day I had several times missed a
Brahman duck and was somewhat anxious to retrieve my reputation.  Quite
early in the morning I got a very fair shot at one; it shook its wings in
derision and flew off, landing again a hundred yards or so down stream.  We
floated down and I had another shot with the same result; for the next shot
I went on shore and deliberately stalked the animal from behind the low
bank and got a sitting shot at about ten yards.  The disgusted bird looked
around indignantly and flew solemnly down stream.  I, even more disgusted,
got back to the boat, but the bird was a little too clever this time; for
he made a wide circle and came flying back right overhead.  I let fly from
below and it fell with a flop into the river.  The fact is that these birds
are so well protected that it is quite useless to shoot at them when the
breast is not exposed, unless a lucky pellet should find its way to the
brain.  So on the next occasion, having noticed that when disturbed they
always went down stream, I went some distance below them and sent two boys
to frighten them from above.  The result was an excellent right and left,
and I consoled myself for my previous fiascos.  We stopped the night at
Toun Myong.
     After a delightful night we went off the next morning and got to Kama
on the Irrawaddy, whence we signalled the steamboat which took us back to
Prome, where we stopped that night.  The next day we spent in visiting the
pagoda,  Thornton doing some sketching and I writing a couple of Buddhist
poems.  We went off in the evening for Rangoon.  The next day we drove
about the town but did little else; and on Monday we paid off Peter.  The
principle on which I had dealt with this man was to give him money in lump
sums as he wanted it, and to call him to give an account of all he had
spent.  He made out that we owed him thirty-seven rupees by this said
account.  I made a few trifling corrections; reducing the balance in his
favour, and including the wages due to him (which he had not reckoned),

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to two rupees, four annas.  He was very indignant and was going to complain
to everyone from the lieutenant-governor to the hotel-keeper.  I think he
was rather staggered when I told him that, as he had been a very good
servant in other respects, I would give him as backsheesh the bottle of
champagne and the three tins which he had already stolen. He appeared very
surprised at my having detected this theft.  Whereby hangs a tale.  On
leaving Rangoon I gave him a list of all the provision, with the
instructions that when he took anything from the store he was to bring the
list to me and have that thing crossed off.  On the second day the list was
missing; he, of course, swore that I had not given it back to him.  I had
kept a duplicate list, which I took very good care not to show.
     That evening I was again down with fever and found myself unable to
take any food whatever.  I called in the local medico, who fed me on iced
champagne, and the next day I was pretty well again.  Thornton in the
meanwhile had gone off to Mandalay.  I was very sorry not to be able to go
on there with him, but my time was too short: I did not know when I might
be summoned to join Eckenstein to go off to Kashmir.
     On the twelfth of February I went on board the "Komilla" for Akyab,
where Allan was now living.  In the course of the day the sea air
completely restored me to health.  On the thirteenth we were off Sandaway,
which did not appear fascinating.  On the next day we put in a Kyakpyu,
which I had so vainly hoped to reach overland.  It has a most delightful
bay and beach, its general appearance recalling the South Sea Islands; but
the place is a den of malaria. We had no time to land, as the captain was
anxious to get into Akyab the same night.  We raced through the straits and
cast anchor there about eight o'clock --- just in time.
     I went ashore with the second officer and proceeded in my usual casual
manner to try to find Allan in the dark.  The job was easier than I
anticipated.  The first man I spoke to greeted me as if I had been his
long-lost brother, and took me off in his own carriage to the monastery
(the name of which is Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung) where I found Allan, whom I now
saw for the first time as a Buddhist monk.  The effect was to make him
appear of gigantic height, as compared to the diminutive Burmese, but
otherwise there was very little change.  The old gentleness was still
there.
     I ought to have mentioned (when talking of Ceylon) the delightful
story of his adventure with a krait.  Going out for a solitary walk one day
with no better weapon than an umbrella, be met a krait sunning himself in
the middle of the road.  Most men would have either killed the krait with
the umbrella or avoided its dangerous neighbourhood.  Allan did neither; he
went up to the deadly little reptile and loaded him with reproaches.  He
showed him how selfish it was to sit in the road where someone might pass
and accidentally tread on him.  "For I am sure," said Allan, "that were
anyone

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to interfere with you, your temper is not sufficiently under control to
prevent you striking him.  Let us see now!" he continued, and deliberately
stirred the beast up with his umbrella.  The krait raised itself and struck
several times viciously, but fortunately at the umbrella only.  Wounded to
the heart by this display of passion and anger, and with tears running down
his cheeks, at least metaphorically speaking, he exhorted the snake to
avoid anger, as it would the most deadly pestilence, explained the four
noble truths, the three characteristics, the five precepts, the ten fetters
of the soul; and expatiated on the doctrine of Karma and all the
paraphernalia of Buddhism for at least ten minutes by the clock.  When he
found the snake was sufficiently impressed he nodded pleasantly and went
off with a "Good day, brother krait!"
     Some men would take this anecdote as illustrating fearlessness; but
the true spring is to be found in compassion.  Allan was perfectly serious
when he preached to the snake, though he was possibly a better man of
science than a good many of the stuck-up young idiots who nowadays lay
claim to the title.  I have here distinguished between fearlessness and
compassion; but in their highest form they are surely identical; even
pseudo-Christ hit the mark when he observed, "Prefect love casteth out
fear."
     They managed to give me some sort of a shakedown, and I slept very
pleasantly at the monastery.  The next morning I went off to breakfast on
board to say goodbye to the captain, who had shown me great kindness, and
afterwards took my luggage and went to Dr. Moung Tjha Nu, the resident
medical officer, who welcomed me heartily and offered me hospitality during
my stay in Akyab.
     He was Allan's chief dayaka; and very kindly and wisely did he provide
for him.  I walked back with Allan to the temple and commenced discussion
all sorts of things, but continuous conversation was quite impossible, for
people of all sorts trooped in incessantly to pay their respects to the
European bhikkhu.  They prostrated themselves at his feet and clung to them
with reverence and affection.  They brought him all sorts of presents.  He
was more like Pasha Bailey Ben than any other character in history.

          They brought him onions strung on ropes,
          And cold boiled beef, and telescopes,

at any rate gifts equally varied and not much more useful.  The doctor
looked in in the afternoon and took me back with him to dinner.  Allan was
inclined to suffer with his old asthma, as it is the Buddhist custom {"non"
"sine causa") to go out of doors at six every morning, and it is very cold
till some time after dawn.  I wish sanctity was not so incompatible with
sanity and sanitation!
     The next day after breakfast Allan cam to the doctor's house to avoid
worshippers, but a few of them found him out after all and produced

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buttered eggs, newspapers, marmalade, brazil nuts, bicarbonate of potash
and works on Buddhism from their ample robes.  We were able, however, to
talk of Buddhism and our plans for extending it to Europe, most of the day.
The next four days were occupied in the same way.