May 26, 1989 e.v. key entry by
 Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.   --- needs further proof reading
 (c) O.T.O.   disk 6

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

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


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                               67


      We may now turn to this journey without the transcendental telescope.
 It was nothing to shout about as original, difficult or dangerous, but it
 certainly was one of the most delightful marches I ever made.  Very few
 Europeans have any idea of foreign parts.  They always wear thick veils of
 prejudice, and even prevent the possibility of enjoying really new
 experiences by their mere habit of life.  They stick to the railway and
 see mere scraps of the country or travel in motors which blur the details
 of the day.
      When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the
 essential relations between one's physical powers and the character of the
 country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do.  Then every man one
 meets is an individual.  One is no longer regarded by the whole population
 as an unapproachable and uninteresting animal to be cheated and robbed.
 One makes contact at every point with every stranger.
      Of course, the more civilized classes, even in Algeria, are
 artificial.  We learnt nothing from the French commandants and other
 officials whom we met, because their chief anxiety was to show what
 perfect gentlemen they were.  We fraternized with them as when one goes to
 a new golf course.  The attitude is cordiality at arm's length.  And these
 people were all so ignorant of the country in which they lived that they
 unanimously warned us that we certainly should be murdered by brigands.
 To us this was a gigantic joke.  We lay down on a patch of grass in the
 open, or a slope of soft sand, and slept feeling just as secure as we
 should have at the Savoy,
      The Arabs also had their own fears for our safety.  They have an
 ineradicable superstition that one is liable to be drowned in the desert.
 This sounds supremely absurd, water being the scantiest element of the
 Sahara.  The root of the belief is that sometimes cloudbursts occur and
 sweep away camps which happen to have been pitched in ravines or
 depressions; but the most ordinary common sense tells one how to guard
 against any such accident.  They are in terror of brigands and also of
 numerous varieties of devils.
      I thought it polite to impress them with my majesty as a Magician.
 With this object I took Burton's hint that a star sapphire was universally
 venerated by Moslems, and having bought a very large and fine specimen of
 this stone in Ceylon and made it into a ring with a gold band of two
 interlaced serpents, I found that Burton was right.  I had merely to
 exhibit this ring to command the greatest possible respect.  On one
 occasion, in fact, a quarrel

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 in a coffee shop having developed into a sort of small riot, and knives
 being drawn, I walked into the scrimmage and drew sigils in the air with
 the ring while intoning a chapter of the Koran.  The fuss stopped
 instantly, and a few minutes later the original parties to the dispute
 came to me and begged me to decide between them, for they saw that I was a
 saint.
      I habitually observed the prescribed five prayers of the orthodox
 Mohammedan, and increased my reputation for piety by constantly reciting
 the Koran as I walked and performing various other practices proper to the
 highest class of dervish.
      I soon saw the Neuburg with his shambling gait and erratic gestures,
 his hangdog look and his lunatic laugh, would damage me in the estimation
 of the natives.  So I turned the liability into an asset by shaving his
 head except for two tufts on the temples, which I twisted up into horns.
 I was thus able to pass him off as a demon that I had tamed and trained to
 serve me as a familiar spirit.  This greatly enhanced my eminence.  The
 more eccentric and horrible Neuburg appeared, the more insanely and
 grotesquely he behaved, the more he inspired the inhabitants with respect
 for the Magician who had mastered so fantastic and fearful a genie.
      Few tourists know even the most elementary facts about such simple
 matters as climate.  I myself was amazed to find how many of the ideas
 which I had derived from my reading were utterly incorrect.  Once, for
 instance we arrived at an inn late at night. It was shut.  We had heard
 that when the coach arrived they would open, so we decided to wait for the
 half hour or so, as we needed food and sleep.  It was a cold, drear night.
 To pass the time we took a stroll across the sand, intending to climb a
 small hill and get a moonlight panorama from the top.  As we walked I
 awoke to the fact that my feet were freezing cold.  I could not understand
 this at all --- the rest of my body was comfortably warm.  I was wearing
 thick woollen stockings with puttees and the Alpine boots which have
 proved adequate in the Himalayas.  Like Keats,

          I stood in my shoes and I wondered; I wondered;
          I stood in my shoes and I wondered.

Wondering made them no warmer.  At last I thought of putting my hand on the
sand.  I snatched it back as if I had touched a red hot plate.  The surface
was colder than any ice I had ever known.  At that moment we heard the
coach and ran back.  I dashed in, tore off my boots and spent the next
quarter of an hour rubbing life back into my toes.  So much for the
superstition that the Sahara is a sweltering furnace.  On clear nights the
radiation is so rapid in that dry air, that the temperature of the ground
falls below freezing point, even when the air six feet above does not
strike one as specially cold.
     Bou Sa�da is one of the most beautiful spots in the world.  It is
frequented

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by French painters more than any other place in Africa.  Its isolation in
the desert, which it beholds from the crest of a wave of the wilderness,
gives an almost sacred character to its galaxy of white-walled houses.
Below, a river rambles through a ravine, shaded by palms and bordered by
gardens and orchards whose flowers and fruits are guarded by hedges of
cactus.  Between these gay green gladnesses, glowing with flowers that
flame beneath the languid leaves of the fruit trees, bright with blossom or
burdened with bounty, a labyrinth of paths invite the idle to wander as
their whim may whisper, from one delicious prospect to another, assured
that wherever one goes there is always some new beauty to delight the eye,
some new token of truth for the ear; at every winding of the way some new
perfume makes one's nostril twitch with pleasure.  And yet the variations
are so subtle that one soon comes to understand that the infinite diversity
of one's impressions depends less on external objects than on the
modulations of one's moods.
     The solitude and silence of these shadowy groves soothe sense and
thought so that the soul becomes aware of every modulation of its melody.
     A few miles beyond Bou Sa�da there is no road.  The last link with
civilization is broken.  It is no longer possible to pretend that the world
is a mere stage where we may strut and scream without facing the facts.
Each man must match himself, alone as at the hour of death, with each
inexorable fact that nature flings in his face --- brigands, sunstroke,
hunger, thirst, sickness, accident: no one of these to be evaded or
explained away, and no one to be propitiated, or from which we may shelter
by appealing to others.
     The traveller must train his senses to the finest possible point.  His
life may depend on his seeing a shadow flit across some far off slope of a
sand dune, and thereby divining an ambush.  The circles of the vulture must
enable him to calculate his course.  Nothing too trivial to be his teacher,
too insignificant to be of infinite import!  As one becomes familiar with
the wilderness, nature herself reveals reality in a sense which one had
never suspected.  The complexity of experience in civilized countries
prevents one from examining anything exhaustively.  Impressions crowd each
other out of the mind.  One never gets more than a glimpse of the nature of
anything in itself, but only of its relation to the rest.
     In the desert each impression is beaten into one's brain with what at
first seems maddening monotony.  One feels starved; there are so few facts
to feed on.  One has to pass through an abyss of boredom.  At last there
comes a crisis.  Suddenly the shroud is snatched away from one's soul and
one enters upon an entirely new kind of life, in which one no longer
regrets the titillation of the thoughts which tumble over each other in
civilized surroundings, each preventing one undergoing the ordeal involved
when it becomes necessary to penetrate beneath the shadow-show to the
secret sanctuary of

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the soul.  I have explained these things in some detail in two essays, "The
Soul of the Desert" and "The Camel", which my wanderings in the Sahara
inspired.
     Part of the effect of crossing the Abyss is that it takes a lone time
to connect the Master with what is left below the Abyss.  Deprived of their
ego, the mind and body of the man are somewhat at sea until, as one may
say, the "wireless control" has been established.  In the year 1910
Aleister Crowley was as a sheep not having a shepherd; the motives and
controlling element had been removed and he was more or less cut off from
the past.  One thing seemed as good as another.  He acted irresponsibly.
He went on with his work more by force of habit than anything else, and the
events of his life were, so to say, more chemical reactions between his
character and his circumstances.
     In the spring, a few days before the publication of number three of
"The Equinox", which contained the Ritual of the 5� = 6� degree of the
old Order, Mathers served him with an injunction restraining publication.
It did not interest him particularly.  He instructed his lawyers and did
not even trouble to go to court.  Mr. Justice Bucknill, who heard the
argument, happened to be an eminent freemason and though he had no idea
what the fuss was about, it seemed to him, on general principles, that
nobody ought to be allowed to publish anything which anyone else might wish
to keep dark.  He therefore confirmed the injunction.  I appealed.
     This time we went into court armed with the facts of the case.  The
judges were Vaughan, Williams, Fletcher, Moulton and Farwell.  They
admitted the difficulty of keeping a straight face and reversed Bucknill's
decisions, with costs.  The argument had been farcically funny and all the
dailies had anything up to three columns on the case.  On the very day of
publication, for the first time, I found myself famous and my work in
demand.
     As a side issue, Mathers having claimed in court to be the Chief of
the Rosicrucian Order, I was invaded by an innumerable concourse of the
queerest imaginable people, each of whom independently asserted that he
himself, and he alone, was that Chief.  Having my own information on the
subject, though communicating it to nobody else, I got rid of these pests
as quickly as possible.  One of my callers, however, did show some method
in his madness; a man named Theodor Reuss --- of whom more anon.  Here I
must simply mention that he was Grand Master of Germany of the combined
Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim Rites of Freemasonry.  I remembered that I
had been made a Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the 33� and last
degree of the Scottish Rite in Mexico ten years before, but I had never
bothered my head about it, it being evident that all freemasonry was either
vain pretence, tomfollery, an excuse for drunken rowdiness, or a sinister
association for political intrigues and commercial pirates.  Reuss told me
a

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good deal of the history of the various rites, which is just as confused
and criminal as any other branch of history; but he did persuade me that
there were a few men who took the matter seriously and believed that the
foolish formalism concealed really important magical secrets.
     This view was confirmed when "The Arcane Schools" of John Yarker came to
me for review.  I wrote to the author, who recognized my title to the
33� and conferred on me the grades of 95� Memphis and 90�
Mizraim.  It seemed as if I had somehow turned a tap.  From this time on I
lived in a perfect shower of diplomas, from Bucharest to Salt Lake City.  I
possess more exalted titles than I have ever been able to count.  I am
supposed to know more secret signs, tokens, passwords, grand-words, grips,
and so on, than I could actually learn in a dozen lives.  An elephant would
break down under the insignia I am entitled to wear.  The natural
consequence of this was that, like Alice when she found the kings and
queens and the rest showering upon her as a pack of cards, I woke up.
     I went to Venice in May, breaking the homeward journey at Pallanza,
where I wrote "Household Gods", a poetical dramatic sketch.  It is a sort of
magical allegory, full of subtle ironies and mystifications; almost the
only thing of its kind I have ever done --- which perhaps accounts for my
having a sneaking affection for it.
     I had made a great many friends in London and the reconstructed Order
was attracting aspirants from all classes of people, some silly loafers
looking for a new sensation, but many most sincere and sensible.  My
inexperience led me into laxity in dealing with these people.  I failed to
enforce the strict rule of the Order: that probationers should be kept
apart.  I allowed them to meet in my studio and even to practise forms of
Magick congregationally.
     In the spring, on May 9th, an evocation of Bartzabel, the spirit of
Mars, was made, so successfully as to demand description.  My assistants
were Commander Marston, R.N., one of the highest officials of the
Admiralty, and Leila Waddell, an Australian violinist whom I had just met
and who appealed to my imagination.
     I began at once to use her as a principal figure in my work.  In the
first week of our intimacy I wrote two stories about her: "The Vixen" and
"The Violinist".  "The Vixen" is about a girl, an heiress in a fox-hunting
shire, who tortures and uses for black magic a girl friend.  She has a
lover, Lord Eyre, whom she despises.  She has some intimate relations with
a phantom fox, who (to put it briefly) obsesses her.  She yields to Eyre,
who climbs into her room at night and finds that she is not a woman but a
vixen.  The effect is to turn him to a hound and he fastens his teeth in
her throat.  Hound and fox are found dead and nothing is every heard again
of Eyre or his mistress.  "The Violinist" is about a girl who invokes, by
means of her music, a demon belonging to one of the Elemental Watch Towers.
She become his mistress.

{629}




















One day her husband returns to the house.  He kisses her and falls dead.
The demon has conferred this power upon her lips.
     Excuse the digression: back to Bartzabel!  In the Triangle was Frater
Omnia Vincam, to serve as a material basis through which the spirit might
manifest.  Here was a startling innovation in tradition.  I wrote,
moreover, a ritual on entirely new principles.  I retained the Cabbalistic
names and formulae, but wrote most of the invocation in poetry.  The idea
was to work up the magical enthusiasm through the exhilaration induced by
music.
     I obtained a great deal of valuable knowledge from the spirit, but the
most interesting item is this: Marston, remembering his official duty,
asked "Will nation rise up against nation?", followed by more detailed
inquiries on receiving an affirmative answer.  We thus learnt that within
five years from that date there would be two wars; the storm centre of the
first would be Turkey, and that of the second would be Germany, and the
result would be the destruction of these two nations.  I only rememberd
this after reaching New York at the end of 1914.  Luckily I had the ritual
with question and answer written down at the time, and an account of these
predictions, precisely fulfilled, appeared in the "New York World".  I may
here remark that I have always been able to foretell the future by various
methods of divination.  Some give more satisfactory results than others,
some are better suited to one class of inquiry, some to another.  In all
cases, constant practice, constant checking up of one's results, critical
study of the conditions, elimination of one's personal bias, and so on,
increase one's accuracy.  I am always experimenting and have taught myself
to get absolutely reliable results from several methods, especially the "Yi"
"King".  Incidentally, I have interpreted and corrected the traditional
methods themselves, thereby excluding sources of error which in the past
have disheartened students; but there is some sort of curse on me as there
was on Cassandra.  I can foretell the issue of any given situation, and
feel the utmost confidence in the correctness of my conclusion, but though
I can and do act on these indications, when they concern my own conduct I
cannot use my power to benefit myself in any of the obvious ways.  That is,
I cannot leave my work even for a couple of days in order to make a fortune
in stocks.  To give an idea of the detailed accuracy of my divinations, let
me quote one recent case.
     I asked the "Yi King" in May of 1922 what would happen to me in England,
whither I was bound.  I got the 21st Hexagram, which means the open
manifestation of one's purpose.  I was, in fact, able to re-enter public
life after years of seclusion.  It means "union by gnawing", which I
understood as bidding me to expect to spend my time in persevering efforts
to establish relations with various people who could be useful to me, but
not to expect to drop into success or to find the obstacles insuperable.
This, too, came true.  The comment in the "Yi King" promises successful
progress and advises

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recourse to law.  My progress was beyond my utmost hopes and I found myself
forced to begin several lawsuits.  The further comment describes the
successive phases of the affair.  The first phase shows its subject
fettered and without resource.  During my first month in England I was
penniless, without proper clothes to wear, and obliged to walk miles to
save the cost of a telephone call or an omnibus.  In the second phase one
suddenly finds everything easy.  All one's plans succeed.  This, too,
occurred.  The third phase shows a man getting to grips with the real
problems; he meets some rebuffs, has some disappointments, but makes no
mistakes.  The third stage of my campaign could not be better described.
In phase four one gets down to work at one's task, aided by financial
advances and contracts to do work of the kind one wants.  This was
fulfilled by my being commissioned to write "The Diary of a Drug Fiend" and
the present book, as well as several things for the "English Review".  The
fifth phase shows the man getting on with his work and obtaining renown and
profit thereby, but it warns the inquirer that his position is perilous and
bids him to be on his guard while not swerving from his course.  From this
I understood that the publication of my novel would arouse a rumpus, as it
did.  The sixth and last phase shows the subject reduced to impotence and
cut off from his communications.  This was fulfilled by the attacks on me
in the press which followed the publication of the novel.
     I could not foresee the exact form which these various forces would
manifest, but I understood the sort of thing I might expect.  I decided to
take the journey rather than wait for a time when a more encouraging symbol
might be given.  I felt that in the circumstances I had no right to expect
anything better.  The symbol promised success.  I ought not to complain at
paying its price.
     So much for what I can do.  Now for what I can't.  I used to test my
methods by predicting the course of political and economic events.  They
confirmed my calculations.  Theoretically, I should have been able to back
my opinion and make a fortune in a few days on the rate of exchange and
similar speculations; but though I did not doubt for a second that success
was certain, I found myself constitutionally incapable of fixing my
attention on subjects which my instincts tell me to be none of my business,
no matter how emphatically my conscious mind urges the necessity and
propriety of so doing.  This apparent impotence is really, I doubt not, the
result of years of ruthless repression of every impulse that is not
integrated absolutely with my true will.  Judged by obvious standards, this
austere puritanism hampers me; but, considered more deeply, I feel that my
concentration is intensified, my potential increased, by such methods, and
that when the course of time allows me to see my career in perspective it
will become evident that my temporary failures were stones in the pyramid
of my eternal success.

{631}





















     I now see the events of 1910 in this light.  I do not regret my
futility or even my errors.  The attainment of the Grade of Magister Templi
had to be paid for, and I might congratulate myself that the cashier
accepted such worthless paper money as the mistakes and misfortunes of a
man.
      My new methods of Magick were so successful that we became more
ambitious every day.  I wrote a ritual for invoking the moon.  The climax
of the ceremony was this: Leila Waddell was to be enthroned as a
representative of the goddess and the lunar influence invoked into her by
the appropriate lyrics.  (I wrote "The Interpreter" and "Pan to Artemis".)
The violinist was to reply by expressing the divine nature through her art.
She was a rough, ill-trained executant, and her playing coarse, crude, with
no touch of subtlety to interpret or passion to exalt the sequence of
sound.  The most cynical critics present were simply stunned at hearing
this fifth-rate fiddler play with a genius whose strength and sublimity was
equal to anything in their experience.  I quote from a half-article in the
"Sketch" of August 24th.  The writer is a financial journalist who thinks
Magick a more brittle bubble than the most preposterous wild-cat scheme
ever floated.

          Crowley then made supplication to the goddess in a beautiful and
     unpublished poem.  A dead silence ensued.  After a long pause, the
     figure enthroned took a violin and played --- played with passion and
     feeling, like a master.  We were thrilled to our very bones.  Once
     again the figure took the violin and played an "Abendlied" so
     beautifully, so gracefully and with such intense feeling that in very
     deed most of us experienced that ecstasy which Crowley so earnestly
     seeks.  Then came a prolonged and intense silence, after which the
     Master of the Ceremonies dismissed us in these words: "By the power in
     me vested, I declare the Temple closed."
          So ended a really beautiful ceremony --- beautifully conceived
     and beautifully carried out.  If there is any higher form of artistic
     expression than great verse and great music I have yet to learn it.  I
     do not pretend to understand the ritual that runs like a thread of
     magic through these meetings of the A.'. A.'..  I do not even know
     what the A.'. A.'. is.  But I do know that the whole ceremony was
     impressive, artistic and produced in those present such a feeling as
     Crowley must have had when he wrote ---

          So Shalt thou conquer space, and lastly climb,
               The walls of time:
          And by the golden path the great have trod
               Reach up to God!

I call special attention to this as evidence that Magick, properly
understood,

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performed and applied, is capable of producing results of quite practical
kinds.  More yet, these results involve no improbable theories.  We can
explain them in terms of well-known laws of nature.  I have always been
able to loose the genius which dwells in the inmost self of even the most
imperfect artist, by taking the proper measures to prevent the interference
of his conscious characteristics.
     Neuburg himself furnishes a striking instance of this.  When I met him
he was writing feeble verses of hardly more than undergraduate merit.
Under my training he produced some of the most passionate, intense, musical
and lofty lyrics in the language.  He left me; the dog hath returned to his
vomit again, and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.
His latest work is as lifeless and limp as it was before I took hold.
     The success of this form of invocation led me to develop the method.
A large number of masonic rituals were at my disposal, and their study
showed that the ancients were accustomed to invoke the gods by a dramatic
presentation or commemoration of their legends.  I decided to bring this
method up to date, while incidentally introducing into such rituals,
passages whose sublimity would help to arouse the necessary enthusiasm by
virtue of its own excellence.  With these ideas in mind, I constructed
seven rituals to the planets.
     In two of these I was assisted by a man named George Rafflovitch,
whose father was a Jewish banker of Odessa, and whose mother a countess
descended from one of the ministers of finance under Napoleon.  Born in
Canes, he had been taken for the army very much against his will.  The
result was a notorious lawsuit to determine his status.
     Coming of age, he had squandered his millions.  No extravagance was
too imbecile.  At one time he bought a travelling circus with a menagerie
and a collection of freaks.  He should certainly have been the principal
attraction.  He had come almost to his last franc when he was pulled up by
a "conseil de famille".  They saved a few thousand for the fool and kept him
on short commons to teach him sense.  He had snarled and become a
socialist.  I met him at the Gargotte off Holborn, being the only man there
who looked at all like a gentleman.  I paid him special attention.  This
suited him down to the ground.  He saw a chance to cadge.
     He agreed with me about socialism.  It appeared that his motive in
frequenting that milieu was identical with my own.  He averred deep
interest in Magick of which he had some slight dilettante knowledge.  He
won my sympathy in his controversy with his family.  I promised to help
him.  I introduced him to influential people in high official positions who
could help him to become naturalized.  (As an Englishman he stood a better
chance of getting free from the control of the "conseil de famille".)
     I also undertook the publication of some of his books.  His talent was

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considerable.  His imperfect acquaintance with English resulted in his
inventing curiously fascinating terms of phraseology.  He had remarkable
imagination and a brilliant ability to use the bizarre.  He made me the
hero of several short stories under the name of Elphenor Pistouillat de la
Ratis-boisi�re and introduced several of my disciples.  These stories
describe in fantastic, exaggerated and distorted images the circle of which
I was the centre.  The curious may consult "The Equinox", vol. I, Nos. ii,
iii and iv, also his own book "The Deuce and All".
     I furthermore lent him considerable sums of money (of course without
interest) at various times extending over three years by which time he had
obtained possession of the salvage of his estate.  He had also learnt the
value of money.  He repaid what I had lent him and then proposed to invest
a portion of his capital in a joint stock company which I was at that time
contemplating to run "The Equinox" on proper business lines.  Negotiations
were still in progress when I left London towards the end of 1909 for
Algeria.
     What was my amazement on my return to find that he had persuaded the
people in charge that he had authority to act for me.  They explained that
he had come round and argued that he was going to be a director of the
proposed company and therefore had power to conduct the business.  The
youth indubitably possessed the virtue of doing nothing by halves.  He
forged my name to endorse cheques payable to me, cashed them and enjoyed
the proceeds.  I gasped.  I liked the man and had no quarrel with him, but
I could not exactly pretend not to notice incidents of this kind.  I
tackled him about it.  He played the innocent and really he was
fundamentally such a half-witted creature that I could not be angry.
Unfortunately, there was something worse --- a matter that touched my
honour.  He had advertised "Liber 777" and stated as an inducement to
purchasers that less than one hundred copies remained for sale.  That was a
lie and I could not brook the association of my name with the shadow of a
false pretence.  But the mischief was done.  The only way out was to make
the statement true, which was done by his purchasing the number of copies
necessary to reduce my stock to ninety.
     He refused to understand my objections to his pastime of testing the
intelligence of bank clerks in the matter of judging whether his imitation
of my endorsement would pass muster.  He indignantly withdrew from the
proposed company and I saw him no more.
     Not till long after did I discover that all this time while he was
living on my bounty he had indefatigably intrigued against me.  For
insidious cunning he was unrivalled.  He had insinuated a thousand
malignant falsehoods about me, to the ears of my closest friends without
their even suspecting his intention to injure me.  In this way he had
alienated several of my nearest and

{634}





















dearest colleagues and his culminating triumph was that he succeeded in
leading Fuller by the nose through a tortuous channel of dark devices to
the gulf of a complete rupture.
     Fuller had begun to behave in a totally unintelligible way.  It was
all so subtle that I could not put my finger on a single incident.  It was
a mere instinct that something was wrong.  The climax came after Jones vs
"The Looking Glass".  Fuller had urged me to take action myself.  When the
verdict justified my judgment.  Fuller hinted that he could not afford to
be openly associated with "The Equinox".  He also tried to interfere with my
conduct of the magazine and made it a condition of his continuing with "The"
"Temple of Solomon the King" that I should surrender my control.  I saw that
he had a swelled head and determined to show him that he was not
indispensable.  I quietly dropped the subject and wrote the section in
number five myself.  Hoping this demonstration had reduced the inflammation
I resumed the discussion and we had practically come to an agreement when
to my breathless amazement he fired pointblank at my head a document in
which he agreed to continue his co-operation on condition that I refrain
from mentioning his name in public or private under penalty of paying him a
hundred pounds for each such offence.  I sat down and poured in a broadside
at close quarters.
     "My dear man," I said in effect, "do recover your sense of proportion,
to say nothing of your sense of humour.  Your contribution, indeed!  I can
do in two days what takes you six months, and my real reason for ever
printing your work at all is my friendship for you.  I wanted to give you a
leg up the literary ladder.  I have taken endless pain to teach you the
first principles of writing.  When I met you, you were not so much as a
fifth-rate journalist, and now you can write quite good prose with no more
than my blue pencil through two out of every three adjectives, and five out
of every six commas.  Another three years with me and I will make you a
master, but please don't think that either I or the Work depend on you, any
more than J.P.Morgan depends on his favourite clerk."
     To return, however, to the rituals.  These seven were really seven
acts of one play, for their order was necessary.  The plot, briefly
summarized, is this:
     Man, unable to solve the Riddle of Existence, takes counsel of Saturn,
extreme old age.  Such answer as he can get is the one word "Despair".
     Is there more hope in the dignity and wisdom of Jupiter?  No; for the
noble senior lacks the vigour of Mars the warrior.  Counsel is in vain
without determination to carry it out.
     Mars, invoked, is indeed capable of victory: but he has already lost
the controlled wisdom of age; in a moment of conquest he wastes the fruits
of it, in the arms of luxury.

{635}






















     It is through this weakness that the perfected man, the Sun, is of
dual nature, and his evil twin slays him in his glory.  So the triumphant
Lord of Heaven, the beloved of Apollo and the Muses is brought down into
the dust, and who shall mourn him but his Mother Nature, Venus, the lady of
love and sorrow?  Well is it if she bears within her the Secret of
Resurrection!
     But even Venus owes all her charm to the swift messenger of the gods,
Mercury, the joyous and ambiguous boy whose tricks first scandalize and
then delight Olympus.
     But Mercury, too, is found wanting.  Now in him alone is the secret
cure for all the woe of the human race.  Swift as ever, he passes, and
gives place to the youngest of the gods, to the Virginal Moon.
     Behold her, Madonna-like, throned and crowned, veiled, silent,
awaiting the promise of the Future.
     She is Isis and Mary, Istar and Bhavani, Artemis and Diana.
     But Artemis is still barren of hope until the spirit of the Infinite
All, great Pan, tears asunder the veil and displays the hope of humanity,
the Crowned Child of the Future.
     I throw myself no bouquets about these Rites of Eleusis.  I should
have given more weeks to their preparation than I did minutes.  I
diminished the importance of the dramatic elements; the dialogue and action
were little more than a setting for the soloists.  These were principally
three; myself, reciting appropriate lyrics --- this involved, by the way,
my learning by heart many hundreds of lines of verse every week --- Leila
Waddell, violinist, and Neuburg, dancer.  I sometimes suspect that he was
the best of the three.  He possessed extraordinary powers.  He gave the
impression that he did not touch the ground at all, and he would go round
the circle at a pace so great that one constantly expected him to be shot
off tangentially.  In the absence of accurate measurements, one does not
like to suggest that there was some unknown force at work, and yet I have
seen so many undeniable magical phenomena take place in his presence that I
feel quite sure in my own mind that he was generating energies of a very
curious kind.  The idea of his dance was, as a rule, to exhaust him
completely.  The climax was his flopping on the floor unconscious.
Sometimes he failed to lose himself, in which case, of course, nothing
happened; but when he succeeded the effect was superb.  It was astounding
to see his body suddenly collapse and shoot across the polished floor like
a curling-stone.
     The Rites of Saturn and Jupiter, repeated and revised constantly in
the studio among ourselves, were admirable.  Nothing of Maeterlinck's ever
produced so overpowering an oppression as this invocation of the dark
spirit of Time.  The better one knew it, the more effective it was.
Familiarity did not breed contempt.  Even the sceptic was impressed when
the officers circumambulate the temple and the audience are picked at
random, one by

{636}



















one, to join the procession, the last to do so being reminded, "Thou also
must die!"
     But what was sublimely effective when performed in private lost most
of its power to impress when transferred to unsuitable surroundings.  I had
no available spare money, no knowledge of the tricks of stagecraft, no
means of supplying the proper atmosphere.  I would not condescend to
theatricalism.  I was much too hasty in preparing the latter rites and they
were not thoroughly rehearsed.  It may seem impossible that any creature
possessed of a grain of common sense should have failed to foresee failure;
but my incorrigible optimism persuaded me that the public were gifted with
reverence, intelligence, imagination; and the gift of interpreting the most
obscure symbolism.
     The first rite was, however, on the whole a success.  Most of the
ceremony takes place in semi-obscurity, so that the audience were not
worried by the uncongenial surroundings of Caxton hall; their attention was
focused on the points of interest because of the illumination surrounding
them, and the histrionic incompetence of the officers was mercifully
concealed from them by the gloom, so that the sublime language of the rite
made its full impression.  The action again gave imagination every chance,
because its minutiae were indistinct as was appropriate to their character.
For instance, when a traitor is discovered and put to death on the spot,
that would have been comic in full light, but there was only the sudden
alarm which broke off the ceremony, the swift inspection, the rush, the
gestures of the avenger, the scream and then silence, followed by the
dragging of the carrion through the darkness.  The illusion was perfect.
     The ceremony proceeds and no hint is given of its nature.  The omens
are disquieting, but no one knows their import.  Every question is answered
in terms which imply ineluctable doom, every hope instantly crushed to the
earth by despair against which no appeal can possibly succeed.  All
aspiration, all ambition ends equally in death.  Help is sought from behind
the veil where, as has been supposed, is a shrine upon whose altar dwells
the unknown god.  But the veil is rent, all is empty, and the chief officer
declares, "Alas, there is no god!"  An invocation is made that god may
appear and the veil is rent from within.  A figure is standing on the altar
and he recites the paraphrase of one of Bradlaugh's sermons made by James
Thomson in "The City of Dreadful Night",  "O melancholy brothers, dark, dark,
dark."  This superb dirge ends:

          But if you would not this poor life fulfil,
          Lo, you are free to end it when you will,
          Without the fear of waking after death.

Darkness falls, complete and sudden; a wild dance to the tomtom ends in

{637}





















the crash of the dancer's body at the foot of the altar.  Silence.  A shot.
The ghastly flickering of incandescent sodium vapour then lights up the
veil.  The officers are seen with all the colour of their robes, and faces
transformed to livid greens.  The veil is drawn aside once more and there
lies the Master himself, self-slain upon the altar, with the principal
woman officer bending over him as Isis lamenting for Osiris.  The light
goes out once more and in the darkness the final dirge of utter
helplessness wails on the violin.  Silence again succeeds.  Two officers,
briefly and brutally, declare that the rite has been accomplished and the
ceremony stops with startling suddenness.
     It was certainly a stupendous idea, carried out in what, after all,
was a simple, dignified, sublime and impressive manner.  It might have been
much better.  Dramatic experience and command of accessories would have
made it nothing short of tremendous.  As it was the better class of
newspapers and magazines wrote sympathetic and laudatory criticism of the
most encouraging kind.  If I had had the most ordinary common sense, I
should have got a proper impresario to have it presented in proper
surroundings by officers trained in the necessary technique.  Had I done so
I might have made an epoch in the drama, by restoring it to its historical
importance as a means of arousing the highest religious enthusiasm.
     There was, however, another side of London life which till that time I
had hardly suspected: that certain newspapers rely for their income upon
blackmail.  And they thought me a suitable victim.  In particular Horatio
Bottomley, in "John Bull", published a page of the foulest falsehoods.  There
is a large class of people in England who argue from their own personal
experience that whenever human beings happen to be together in a subdued
light they can have no idea in their minds by that of indecent assault.
     Bottomley subsided at once on discovering that I was not likely to pay
up and look pleasant; but there was at that time a paper, "The Looking"
"Glass", edited by an animal called De Wend Fenton.  He printed a scurrilous
attack on the ceremony and concluded by a threat to proceed to expose my
personal misdeeds.  He then rang up a mutual friend, and said that he hoped
I was not offended, and that he would like to meet me at dinner to talk
things over.  My friend rang me up.  I merely said, "I take it that you
don't want me to be blackmailed over your coffee."
     Fenton accordingly proceeded to publish article after article, packed
with the most stupid falsehoods about me; some of them deliberate
distortions of fifth-hand fact; some simple invention.  To my surprise many
of my friends took fright and urged me to bring a lawsuit for libel.
Fuller, in particular, to my great surprise, was almost dictatorial about
my duty.  He had probably been persuaded by his brother, who was a junior
partner in the firm of solicitors who had represented me in the matter of
Mathers.  I did not care one way or the other what I did, but I took
counsel with two men whose knowledge

{638}




















of the world of men was indisputably great; one, a probationer, the Hon.
Everard Fielding, the other, Raymond Radclyffe, who, though utterly
indifferent to Magick, was passionately fond of poetry and thought mine
first-class, and unrivalled in my generation.  He edited a high-class
financial weekly and was rightly reputed as the most incorruptible, high-
minded and shrew critic of the city.  Their opinion was identical and
emphatic: "If you touch pitch you will be defiled," said one.  "Fenton has
been warned off the turf and his city editor has just come out of jail,"
said the other.  There was nothing to gain.  "The Looking Glass" was
bankrupt, living from hand to mouth on hush money.  Its public was composed
of stable boys, counter-jumpers who fancied themselves as sportsmen, and
people whose only literary recreation consisted in reading smutty stories
and jokes, or licking their lips over the details of the most sordid
divorces, and gloating generally over the wickedness of the aristocracy.
     Apart from this, my course had been made clear by my own Chiefs.  It
was almost as if they had foreseen the circumstances.  The case was met by
almost the last clause of "The Vision and the Voice":

          Mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty; yes, thrice and four times mighty
     art thou.  He that riseth up against thee shall be thrown down, though
     thou raise not so much as thy little finger against him.  And he that
     speaketh evil against thee shall be put to shame, though thy lips
     utter not the littlest syllable against him.  And he that thinketh
     evil concerning thee shall be confounded in his thought, although in
     thy mind arise not the least thought of him.  And they shall be
     brought unto subjection unto thee, and serve thee, though thou willest
     it not.

     I saw no objection to stating my position for the sake of sincere and
worthy people who might, through ignorance of the facts, be turned away
from truth.  I accordingly availed myself of the editor of a high-class
illustrated weekly, the "Bystander", and wrote two articles explaining what
the Rites of Eleusis were; how people might cultivate their highest
faculties by studying them.  I also published the text of the rites as a
supplement to number six of "The Equinox".  I could not condescend to reply
to personal abuse.  God ignored Bradlaugh's challenge to strike him dead
within the next five minutes, and the king does not imprison every street-
corner socialist who attacks him.  Only when such rumours as that of his
secret marriage to Miss. Beauchamp circulate among people sufficiently
important to make it matter, does he deign to prosecute.  The Headmaster of
Eton had not protested when Bottomley accused him of advocating Platonic
love.  I was content to await the acquittal of history.
     Again, as Nehemiah said, "I am doing a great work and I cannot come

{639}





















down."  I was up to my neck in every kind of business, from the editing of
"The Equinox" to the superintendence of the Order, apart from my own literary
labours.  I had no time for lawsuits.  Besides, preoccupation with such
matters means anxiety and unfits one for calm concentration on one's real
business.  It was also in a sense a point of honour with me not to
interfere with the Masters.
     What has time to say?  We know what happened to Horatio Bottomley.  I
am glad to recall that when I heard of his arrest I wrote to tell him that
I bore no malice and that I hoped he would be able to prove his innocence.
I am indeed sincerely sorry that a man with such great qualities should
have turned them to such poor purpose.  What is the summary of it all?  So
many fools confirmed in their folly, so many base, vile passions pandered
to; so many simple-minded folk swindled out of their savings.  And, on the
other side, so many years consumed in cheap coarse pleasures, soured by
constant fears of being found out, and crowned by utter ruin worse than
death at the hands of a pettier scoundrel than himself.  Even by the
standards of the uttermost disregard of moral and spiritual success, it is
the extreme stupidity to be dishonest.
     The fate of Fenton is less notorious, but is no less striking a
testimony to the vigilance and might of the Masters.  One of Fenton's
mistresses had an admirer, a peer of the realm, prodigiously wealthy and
extremely aged.  She arranged with Fenton to marry the old man; he would
die in the course of nature without too tedious waiting and the charms of
the lady might even shorten it.  But the peer still adorns the peerage!  It
is Fenton that sleeps with his fathers!  I do not know any man or woman who
has attacked, betrayed, calumniated or otherwise opposed my Work, who has
not met with disaster.  Some are dead, some are insane, some are in jail.
The only exceptions are those whom I have protected from retribution by
taking up arms for myself and thus inducing the Masters to stand aside and
see fair play.
    There is another side to the medal.  Fenton, seeing that I was not to
be dragged down into his dirt, introduced into his filthy articles the
names of Allan Bennett and George Cecil Jones.  Bennett was described as a
"rascally sham Buddhist monk" and it was suggested that (in common with
everyone else I knew!) my relations with him were morally reprehensible.
This was not likely to worry Allan meditating in his monastery upon the
evils of existence and practising the precepts of the Buddha; but Jones was
otherwise situated.  He had married to the extent of four children.  Family
life and the contamination of commercial chemistry had insensibly drawn him
from the straight path.
     So he put on the armour of Saul, and Goliath made mincemeat of him.
He went to a tame solicitor, a mild mystic addicted to alchemy; no doubt as
congenial a companion for a chat in a club over a glass of lemonade as one

{640}





















could have found between Swiss Cottage and Streatham Common, but the last
man in the world to scrap with a ruffian who had no idea of fair fighting.
He briefed a barrister who had only recently been admitted, having
previously been a solicitor.  This man had to face some of the most
formidable talent at the Bar.
     The case occupied two days.  I sat in court hardly able to contain my
laughter.  The farcical folly of the proceedings eclipsed Gilbert's "Trial"
"by Jury".  Mr. Schiller, an admirably adroit and aggressive advocate of the
uncompromising, overbearing type, had everything his own way.  He actually
got the judge to admit the evidence of an alleged conversation which took
place ten years earlier and had no reference whatever to Jones.  The judge,
Scrutton, was evidently bewildered by the "outr�" character of the case.  He
even remarked that it was like the trial of "Alice in Wonderland".
     Mr. Schiller constantly referred to me as "that loathsome and
abominable creature", though I was not represented in the case.  The
evidence against me was, first, my alleged remark in the spring of 1910,
which even if I had made it, might have meant anything or nothing in the
absence of any context; and, secondly, that the initials of four Latin
"finger-posts" out of several hundreds in one of my books made vulgar
words, such as may be found in Sir Thomas Malory, John Keats, Robert
Browning, Shakespeare, Urquhart, Motteux and a host of other infamous
pornographers.  It would have been equally fair to rearrange the letters of
the judge's surname to make a sentence describing a deplorable fact in
pathology, and accuse his lordship of outraging propriety every time he
signed a cheque.
     The judge made rather malicious fun of both sides.  Every few minutes
some mysterious fact would crop up which I could explain better than anyone
else.  "But surely," the judge would murmur, "the proper person to tell the
court about this is Mr. Crowley.  Why don't you call Mr. Crowley?"  And
both sides would deplore the impossibility of discovering where Mr. Crowley
was, though I was sitting in the court "lippis et tonsoribus notus", thanks
to my unmistakable peculiarities --- I will not say the majesty and beauty
of my presence; having been familiarized to everybody in England by
innumerable photographs as an explorer, poet, Magician, publisher,
religious reformer, dramatist, theatrical producer, reciter and publicist.
     "The Looking Glass", of course, could not call me, because I should have
immediately disclosed that the libel on Jones was only an incident in an
elaborate attempt to blackmail, and Jones would not call me because he was
afraid that my contempt for conventions, my scorn of discretion as merely a
euphemism for deceit, and my confidence in the power of truth and in the
integrity and intelligence of men in general, would lead me to make some
damaging admission.
     He was ill advised.  The intensity of my enthusiasm, my candour and my

{641}





















sheer personality would have dominated the court.  They would have been
bound to understand that even my follies and faults testified to my good
faith, high-mindedness and honour.  No man with a personal axe to grind
would have done such frank, fearless, imprudent things.  I had never been
conciliatory; I had never been a flatterer or an opportunist.  Brand
himself was not more contemptuous of compromise.  Such a man may be
misguided, wrong-headed, a maker of mischief, but he must be sincere.  It
would have been seen at once that the beliefs and prejudices of men meant
nothing to me, that my eyes were fixed on the enternal, my mind conscious
only of God, and my heart wholly filled with the love of the Light.
However, he feared.  He had forgotten the first words of his initiation,
"Fear is failure and the forerunner of failure."  Therefore he failed.
    The only allegation against him was that he was my friend and colleague
and he read into this the suggestion that our relations were criminal. The
defendants denied that they had ever meant to make any such suggestion.
The judge said in his summing up that, obscure as the case might be in many
ways, one things was clear:  Mr. Jones had sworn emphatically that he was
innocent of the offence in question, the defendants had sworn that they had
never at any time, and did not now, intend to suggest that he was guilty of
any such conduct.
     The jury retired.  Apparently they saw something sinister in the
unanimity of plaintiff, defendant and judge.  They "breathed together", so to
speak, and the Latin for that was "conspiracy".  If nobody had suggested this
atrocity, it was time someone did!  They returned as radiant as they had
departed distressed.  They declared that the defendants had perjured
themselves in denying that they had accused Mr. Jones: that Mr. Jones had
perjured himself in denying his guilt; that the judge had made a fool of
himself by directing them to believe the evidence on either side; that "The"
"Looking Glass" had meant to accuse Mr. Jones of felony; and, finally, that a
felon he was.
     My contact with civilization has taught me little and that little
hardly worth learning.  One sees only the superficial aspects of things and
those as often as not are deceptive.  One's comprehension is confused and
incoherent; one's conclusions cancel each other out.  But my two days in
court did really add to my practical knowledge of "homo sapiens".  Jones had
sworn so simply, sincerely, solemnly, earnestly and emphatically; Fuller
had spoken up with soldierly straightforwardness.  Against these were
matched the almost insane pomposities of Mathers, a notorious rascal, the
bombastic blusterings of Berridge, an ill-reputed doctor on the borders of
quackery, who had blanched and stammered at the first word of cross-
examination; the sly evasions of Cran, a solicitor whose shifty glance was
itself enough to warn the veriest tyro in physiognomy not to believe a word
he said; and the twelve good men and true had brought in a verdict against
the evidence, against the

{642}




















judge's direction, against the psychology of the witnesses.  And the sole
ground for their verdict was that the existence of entirely unsupported
suspicion of so horrible a crime proved that it must be justified.
     It was the psychology of the Middle Ages.  A man might or might not be
guilty of murder, but witchcraft was so unimaginable an abomination that it
was unthinkable that anyone could accuse people of it unless it were true.
I remembered the case of Eckenstein.  He had committed a crime too
frightful to put into words and therefore he must be guilty.  I had found
it much the same with myself.  Nobody seemed to care whether I had or had
not done various things which anyone might be expected to do, but nobody
seemed to entertain a doubt of my having done things impossible in nature.
Nobody troubled to find out the facts about the simplest matters.  People
printed falsehoods about my family, my fortune, the best-known events of my
life.  There was no attempt to be consistent or probable.  To edit a
newspaper while undergoing penal servitude seemed to strike nobody as
beyond my ability, and so on "ad nauseam".  Still more absurdly, trifles
which are true of hundreds of thousands of people became charged with the
most sinister significance when applied to myself.  I have been accused of
living in a farmhouse, as if only assassins so far forget themselves.  If I
turned down the light, it must be to conceal my crimes.  If I turn it up,
it proves my shamelessness.  If I go to London, I must be fleeing from the
police in Paris; if to Paris, from the police in London.
     The result of the Jones case neither surprised nor shocked me.  It
simply confirmed me in my determination to do my work and nothing else but
my work.  It was none of my business whether what I did was popular.  "The"
"Pilgrim's Progress" would have been no better if its author had been a
generally respected churchwarden instead of a jailbird, and no worse if he
had been a highwayman instead of a tinker.  One cannot even help oneself to
become famous by any given methods.  One may, indeed, push oneself into
society where one does not belong for the moment.  Compare the careers of
Swinburne and Alfred Austin.  The later became Laureate, thanks to his
sound Conservative principles and respectability, but it hasn't made any
difference, even twenty years later, except to afford an instance of the
utter absurdity, even from the most practical standpoint, of wasting a
moment on anything but making one's work as perfect as possible.
     Here is another paradox.  There are plenty of people in the literary
world who know all about this, yet they still expect intelligent people to
do all these stupid things which they have just proved utterly useless, as
if their efficacy had never been doubted.  I remember one evening how
somebody dropped in to tell me that I was being damaged by some silly
scandal.  I turned pale and began to breathe quickly, crossed to my
bookcase and opened some volume of mine.  I gave a great sigh of relief and
came back,

{643}





















my face flooded with joy.  "Dear friend," I said pointing to the page,
"your fear is quite ill founded."  For a moment I thought that a semi-colon
might have been changed into a comma.
     As to the other point, I sometimes wonder whether I have not been
affected by an incident of early childhood.  My father used to go
evangelizing the villages on foot.  I would go with him.  Sometimes he
would give people tracts and otherwise deal straightforwardly, but
sometimes he did a very cruel thing.  He would notice somebody cheerfully
engaged in some task and ask sympathetically its object.  The victim would
expand and say that he hoped for such and such a result.  He was now in a
trap.  My father would say, "And then?"  By repeating this question, he
would ferret out the ambition of his prey to be mayor of his town or what
not, and still came the inexorable "And then?" till the wretched individual
thought to cut it short by saying as little uncomfortably as possible, "Oh
well, by that time I shall be ready to die."  More solemnly than ever came
the question, "And "then"?"  In this way my father would break down the
entire chain of causes and bring his interlocutor to realize the entire
vanity of human effort.  The moral was, of course, "Get right with God."

     At this time the consciences of men were much exercised, as our
fathers put it, with regard to the monument which Jacob Epstein had made
for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in P�re-Lachaise.  This monument had been on
exhibition in his studio in London for some months and the most delicately
minded dilettanti had detected nothing objectionable in it.  No sooner had
it been put in the cemetery than the guardian objected to it as indecent.
The Prefect of the Seine upheld him.  I went to see it.  I did not greatly
admire it; I thought the general design lumpish and top-heavy, but the
modelling of the winged sphinx, or whatever it was, seemed admirably simple
and subtle.  The aesthetic point was, however, not at stake.  The attitude
of the authorities was an insult and outrage to the freedom of art.  The
entire innocence of the statue made their action less defensible, thought
personally I do not believe in any restrictions based on prejudice.  Great
art is always outspoken and its effect on people depends on their minds
alone.  We have now discovered, in fact, that the most harmless phenomena
of dreams really represent the most indecent and abominable ideas.  If we
choose to find an objectionable meaning in "Alice in Wonderland", or
determine to persuade ourselves that the frank oriental obscenities of the
Bible are indecent, no one can stop us.  Mankind can only rise above his
lower self by facing the facts and mastering his instincts.
     I was indignant at the insult to Epstein and to art in his person.  I
therefore resolved to make a gesture on behalf of the prerogatives of
creative genius.  I printed a manifesto:

{644}






















               "AU NOM DE LA LIBERT� DE L'ART"

          L'Artiste a le droit de cr�er ce qu'il vent!
          Le beau monument d'Oscar Wilde au P�re-Lachaise, chef d'oeuvre du
     sculpteur Jacob Epstein, quoique d�j� mutil� et d�grad� par ordre du
     Pr�fet de la Seine, reste toujours voil�.
          A midi, Mercredi prochain le 5 Novembre, M. Aleister Crowley, le
     po�te Irlandais, va le d�voiler.  Venez lui pr�ter votre sympathie et
     votre aide, venez protester contre la tyrannie pudibonde et pornophile
     des bourgeois, venez affirmer le droit de l'Artiste de cr�er ce qu'il
     veut.
          Rendez-vous, Cimeti�re de P�re-Lachaise, aupr�s du monument
     d'Oscar Wilde, � midi, Mercredi, 5 Novembre.

     I had this distributed widely through Paris.  My friend and landlord,
M. Bourcier, shook his head very sadly.  They would send soldiers, he said,
"with cannon and bayonet" to form a cordon round the monument and prevent
me from removing the tarpaulin.  Oh, will they? said I.  So I opened my
mind to an enthusiastic young American, who agreed to help me.  We bought a
coil of extremely fine and strong steel wire, which would be practically
invisible in the dull November gloom.  We waited till the gates were closed
and then proceeded to attach the wire to the tarpaulin, so that from the
shelter of a tree a couple of hundred yards away, a gentle pull would
suffice to bring it away, I having cut through the cords which kept it in
place in such a way that they held only by a fibre, apparently uninjured.
I was to make no attempt to rush the military forces of the Republic, but
make a speech on the outskirts.  When I threw up my arm to apostrophize the
empyrean, he was to pull the wires from his lurking place.  These
arrangements completed, we got out by explaining to the gatekeeper that we
had lost our way.
     The next day at the appointed hour, I went to the cemetery with one or
two desperate adherents.  A distinguished concourse of enthusiasts was
awaiting the Darling of Destiny, the Warden of the Worthiness of Wilde, the
Emancipator of the Ebullition of Epstein.  We marched in solemn procession
to the tomb.  I was amused to observe that the patrols, immediately they
saw us, scuttled away like rabbits.  I supposed at first that they had gone
to give warning, and expected to be arrested before the conclusion of the
entertainment, but when we got to the tomb I found no serried ranks of
soldiers shouting, "Il ne passeront pas!"  There was not a soul in sight!
     I then understood that orders had been given on no account to
interfere with the mad Irish poet.  It rather took the wind out of my
sails.  I made my speech and unveiled Epstein's effort in the dull
drizzling weather.  It was a disheartening success.  The affair, however,
made a great noise in the newspapers, both in France and in England, and
the funniest thing about it was

{645}



















that Epstein himself, the one person above all others who should have been
gratified, one would have supposed, took my action in rather bad part.
     I have always found Epstein's psychology very puzzling.  He is a
German Jew, born in the lower East Side of New York City, and his genius,
like Rodin's, is purely natural.  His conscious ideas are out of keeping
with it and destroy it whenever he allows them to interfere.  Thus, at one
time, he got into the worst set of pretentious humbugs in London, those
nonentities who proclaim tirelessly at the top of their voices how great
they are, and how their pedantic principles are the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.  They theorize tediously in obscure caf�s and
produce either meaningless monstrosities or nothing at all.
     Cubism, vorticism, dadaism, and such sectarian sillinesses all come to
the same thing; they are embalmed intellectual fads, invented in order to
prove that the imbecility of their adherents is sublime.  Conscious of
their incapacity they try to prove its perfection, just as a woman who
squinted might try to persuade herself that cross eyes constitute a special
charm.  The fallacy lies in this: a work of art justifies itself by its
direct magical effect on the observer.  It is puerile to "prove" that Pope
is a better poet than Shakespeare because his classicism is worthier than
the "unhappy barbarism" (as Hume says) of the Elizabethan.  Critical rules
derived from analysis after the event are always impertinent.  One cannot
improve on Swinburne by using his merits more accurately than he did
himself.
     But Epstein allowed himself to be influenced by the pompous
cocksureness of men who were not fit to cart his clay, and for a time tried
to work on their principles instead of allowing his genius to express
itself as it would, with disastrous results.  I have myself made an ass of
myself now and again, by trying to construct consciously according to my
convictions.  But at least I never let myself be influenced by the fashions
of a clique.
     I am reminded of an interesting circumstance which occurred in 1912.
Epstein had made a Sun-God.  Hearing this, I hurried to his studio.  I
thought it a sign that the ideas which moved me were independently
penetrating other minds.  "Hullo," said I, as I entered the studio; "you've
been doing the Man of Vitruvius, have you?"  "Man of what?" said Epstein.
"Vitruvius; you know --- the Microcosm?"  I might have been talking
Choctaw.  I could not believe that Epstein did not know all about it.  But
he did not know even which of his statues I was talking about.  I pointed.
"Nonsense," said he, "that is my Sun-God.  What has Besubius got to do with
it?"  I was struck dumb.
     Vitruvius was (of course, but I suppose I had better explain!) the
great Augustan architect, whose treatise on the subject is the supreme
classic of its kind.  He had discovered the rationale of beauty and similar
moral ideas.  He had demonstrated the necessity of adhering to certain
proportions.  It chanced that I had in my pocket a proof of one of the
illustrations of my

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"Book Four", Part II.  I pulled it out and put it under his nose.  In all
essentials it was identical with Epstein's idea of the Sun-God.  The
astounding thing is not this mere similarity, but the fact that Epstein had
called it by that name; for the man of Vitruvius is really the Sun-God.  It
is the symbol which unifies the centre of our system with the true nature
of man.
     The genius of Epstein had expressed through him a mystical fact of
supreme importance, without the aid of any intellectual process.  It was
one more instance of my theory that direct intuition is capable of
discerning "a priori" truths as adequately as the inductive method of
intellect reveals them "a posteriori".  Its results are equally reliable, or
more so, when their medium is genius, and this in its turn is its own all-
sufficient witness by virtue of its power to express itself in beauty.
"Beauty is truth; truth, beauty" has thus a precise logical meaning; it is
not merely a poetical fancy.
     Our appreciation of a sonnet and a syllogism is aroused by identical
qualities in our nature.  The same principle applied to each impression
produces reactions whose interrelation is necessary.  It is not merely a
matter of taste to prefer Rembrandt to Dana Gibson.  It implies a
corresponding perception of scientific and philosophical problems.  When
men who agree about Goya disagree about geology, one may deduce confidently
that there is somewhere a failure of self-comprehension on one subject or
the other, for all our opinions are partial expressions of our essential
spiritual structure.  This fact may be used to detect the sources of error
in one's own mind.  I have often been able to correct my views of some
problem in mathematics or physics by referring them to some artistic
standard.  Having detected where the incompatibility lies, it becomes clear
where to look for the misunderstanding.
     The Oscar Wilde monument was fated to furnish further amusement.  With
unparalleled insolence, the authorities decided to mutilate Epstein's work.
They employed a sculptor, who must, by the way, have been utterly lost to
all sense of shame, to fix a bronze butterfly over the "objectionable"
feature of the monument.  This feature had been quite unnoticeable to any
but the most prurient observer.  The butterfly, being of different material
and workmanship, clamoured for attention to exactly that which it was
intended to make people forget.
     This incidentally is a characteristic of puritan psychology.  Nobody
would notice that side of nature to which those folk whose goodness resents
that of God, attach a "bad" meaning, if they did not persistently emphasize
its existence.  The bad taste of this outrage went even further.  The
butterfly was notoriously the emblem of Whistler, whose controversies with
Wilde were so savagely witty.  To put this on the very symbol of Wilde's
creative genius was the most obscene insult which could have been imagined.
Martial never composed an epigram so indecently mocking.

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     I did not know that this outrage had been perpetrated.  I had gone to
the cemetery simply to see if the tarpaulin had been replaced.  I confess
that I fully enjoyed the flavour of this foul jest.  It was all the more
pungent because unintentional.  (The idea had been simply to make a quiet,
inconspicuous modification.  It is really strange how polite propriety is
always stumbling into Rabelaisian jests.  I remember, for instance, writing
in some article for the New York "Vanity Fair", "Science offers her virgin
head to the caress of Magick."  The editor thought the word "virgin" a
little risky and changed it to "maiden"!)
     Recovering from the first spasm of cynical appreciation, I saw that
there was only one thing to be done in the interests of common decency and
respect for Epstein.  I detached the butterfly and put it under my
waistcoat.  The gate keeper did not notice how portly I had become.  When I
reached London, I put on evening dress and affixed the butterfly to my own
person in he same way as previously to the statue, in the interests of
modesty, and then marched into the Caf� Royal, to the delight of the
assembled multitude.  Epstein himself happened to be there and it was a
glorious evening.  By this time he had understood my motives; that I was
honestly indignant at the outrage to him and determined to uphold the
privileges of the artist.





















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                              68


     The rites being over, and their lesson learnt, I felt free to go back
to my beloved Sahara.  As before, I took Neuburg with me and motored down
from Algiers to bou Sa�da to economize time.  We proposed to take a more
extended itinerary.  There were certain little-known parts of the desert
within comparatively easy reach.  It was part of the programme to obtain
visions of the sixteen Sub-Elements, as a sort of pendant to the Aethyrs,
but the time was not yet.  We began, but the results were so unsatisfactory
that we broke off.  I have, of course, no doubt that success depends
entirely upon working for it, but it is ultimately as impossible to perform
a given Operation in Magick to order as it is to write a poem to order,
however one's technical ability seems to promise success.
     Experiences of this sort ultimately taught me that the will which is
behind all magical working is not the conscious will but the true will.
Success depends therefore, firstly, on making sure that one's powers are
equal to any required demand; but, secondly, upon learning the kind of work
for which they are really wanted.  It is an excellent training, no doubt,
to plug ahead perseveringly in the most discouraging conditions.  Indeed
the professional is better than the amateur mainly because he has had to
struggle on day after day; but this is a question of early training.  When
one has come to the height of one's powers, one still has one's "days off".
     This second journey in the Sahara took us much deeper into desolation.
We had two camels and a man to drive them and a boy to look after the
camels.  We picked up occasional wayfarers as we went, and dropped them
again, in the most charmingly casual way.  At our first halt we enjoyed the
hospitality of a famous sheikh who had established a sort of mystical
university in that obscure corner of the world.  We found him a courteous
host and a most enlightened scholar.  One of the advantages of spiritual
development is the confirmation of one's results which one obtains from
similarly disposed people whom one meets.  There is a real freemasonry
among such men, which does not depend upon formula and dogma.  The
instinctive sympathy proves that one has done right to climb beyond
conscious conclusions.  In the kingdom of spirit is freedom.
     Our course took us across a chain of mountains.  It was a beautiful
morning, with but a touch of north-west wind.  We were feeling very fit; I
had forgotten all about England and we began to congratulate ourselves on
another pleasant journey.  I suppose the north-west wind was eavesdropping.

{649)























     We has some food in an unexpected and decayed hovel about noon; for
the wind had got up sufficiently to make it too cold to sit about.  An hour
later we struck for the mountains.  It was a really fine mountain pass; the
descent a splendid gorge, precipice-walled.  The camel driver wanted to
pitch camp about three o'clock and we had trouble with him.
     Camel drivers have no sense at all; in England they would get either
the Embankment or the Home Office.  This imbecile had been all his life in
the desert and had not yet learnt that he and his camel needed food.  He
never took any with him, an having reached a suitable spot thirty miles
from the nearest blade of grass, complained of hunger.
     I had hoped he would have found some thistles.
     This by parenthesis.  We wandered on and presently emerging from the
gorge came upon an Arab, who spoke of a Bedouin encampment downstream.
     This we found a few minutes after nightfall.  The wind was violent and
bitter beyond belief, but no rain fell.  "Rain never falls south of Sidi
Aissa."
     So we fed and turned in.  Our tent was an Arab lean-to, a mere blanket
propped on sticks, some necessary to its support, others designed to
interfere with the comfort of the people inside.
     My disciple, fatigued by the day's march, fell asleep.
     As it happened --- pure luck, for he had no more sense than the camel
driver; disciples never have! --- he had chosen the one possible spot.  As
for me, I woke in about half an hour to feel the most devilish downpour.
It was as bad as Darjeeling and the ridge that leads to Kangchenjunga.  We
had pitched the tent in a fairly sheltered spot under the walls of the
river; but the rain ran down the props of the tent and through the tent
itself, and soaked us.
     In the morning, after a night spent in that condition when one is half
asleep from exhaustion and half awake from misery, the storm still blew.
     We waited till nearly nine.  The Bedouins told us that four miles on
there was a village.  We thought of coffee and made tracks.  So off we went
over the sopping desert and reached the "village" in an hour.  There were
palms and gardens --- and one deserted hovel, with no door.  The roof, made
of boughs weighted with big stones and made tight with mud, was half broken
through.  A giant stone hung imminent, half-way fallen.  All day we waited
for the rain to stop falling in the place "where it never fell".
     Night came and the blizzard redoubled its violence; but the shelter
allowed us a little sleep until the mud dissolved and the roof became a
sieve.  The rest of the night was a shower-bath.
     In the morning there was no great sign of improvement.  I had to kick
the camel driver into action and chase the camels with my own fair feet.
He had a million excuses for not going on, all on a level.  "The camels
would

{650}





















catch cold" --- good from the man who had left them all night in the rain!
"They would slip."  "They would die."  "They were too hungry." --- From the
man who hadn't brought food for them!  "They were tired" --- and so on.
But I got the party off at last and came in a couple of hours to a tomb
with a coffin in it.  There they sat down and refused to stir.  I simply
took no notice.  My disciple took one camel and I took the other, and went
off.  We left them in the tomb, grousing.
     Steering by map and compass, I judged a good pass through the next
range of mountains, and made for it.  The flat desert was standing in
water; and the streams were difficult for the camels who hate water as much
as disciples do.
     It was better on the mountainside.  Near the top of the pass we
perceived our men following, as the lesser of two evils.  I was sorry, in a
way; it would have been a fine adventure to worry through to Sidi Khaaled
with these two brutes and a daft Davie!
     It was just as the top was reached that I said, without any apparent
reason, "The storm's over."  My disciple did his Thomas act.  There was no
opening in the furious grey heaven;  the wind raged and the rain poured.
But I stuck to it; I had felt the first contention of the south wind in a
momentary lull.  I was right.
     The descent of the pass was far from easy.  The "road" crosses and
recrosses the bed of the river as often as it can; sometimes even follows
the course.
     And this stream was a furious spate, slippery and dangerous for men,
impassable for members of the Alpine Club, and almost impassable for
camels.  It was nearly night fall before we left the gorge and a barren
plain confronted us.
     It was useless to struggle on much further. The rain still poured; the
desert stood six inches deep in water.  The hills were a mass of snow.
     (We heard later that many houses had been washed away at Ouled Djellal
in this unprecedented storm.  Traffic was interrupted by snow on the East
Algerian Railway, and the "Mar�chal Bugeaud" was forty hours late at
Marseilles, having to beat up under the lee of the Spanish shore for
shelter.)
     So I picked out a good big tree by the stream and we pitched camp.
     We had little hope of lighting a fire; but there is in the desert a
certain impermeable grass, and by using this as a starter, we got it going.
No sooner had the blaze sprung up, filling the night with golden showers of
sparks, that the envious stars determined to rival the display.  Every
cloud disappeared as by magic.  But the fire remained the popular
favourite!
     All night I toiled to dry myself and my clothes, refreshing the old
Adam with coffee, potted pheasant and Garibaldi biscuits at not infrequent
intervals.
     The morning was ecstasy.  The light came over the sand, wave upon wave

{651}



















of grey.  The desert was dry.  There was no water in the stream, save in
rare pools.  We struck camp early.
     We glanced up at the path which we had travelled; the ranges still
glowed with unaccustomed snow; from the north-west the wind still struggled
fitfully to assert its dominion, but we, with joy and praise in our hearts,
turned our glad faces, singing to the assurgent sun.
     The most interesting village on our route was Ouled Djellal.  It was
quite a tiny place, but there is a hovel which calls itself an European
hotel, kept by a strayed Frenchman.  The village boasts a barn where one
can go every night and watch dancing girls.  I need not describe their
doings, but I may say that this is the only form of amusement that I have
ever found of which I never get tired.  I like to drop in pretty early and
sit there all through the night, smoking tobacco, or kif, and drinking
coffee, cup after cup.
     The monotonous rhythm of sound and movement dulls the edge of one's
intellectual activity in very much the same way as a mantra.  The finest
concerts and operas, or such spectacles as the Russian ballet, alleviate
the pain of existence by putting a positive pleasure to work against the
pale persistent pang; but, as the Buddha has shown, the remedy increases
the disease.  I have long since come to the point in which I could say that
I had enjoyed all possible forms of delight to the utmost possible extent.
I am not blas�; I can still enjoy everything as well as I ever could.
More: I know how to extract infinite rapture from the most insignificant
incidents, but this faculty depends on the refusal to accept such currency
at its own valuation.  This being so, it is on the whole easier to obtain
pleasure from those things which soothe rather than from those things which
excite.
     It has just struck me that these remarks may seem very perverse.
Average people associate Arab dances with animal excitement.   Such an
attitude enables me to diagnose their case.  They are for the most part
incapable of true passion, but their emotions are so disordered and
uncontrolled that at the slightest touch they give a leap and a squeal.
Puritanism in the conventional sense of the word is, in fact, a neurosis.
One ought to possess one's physical powers in the greatest measure but they
should be so collected and controlled that they cannot be excited by
inadequate stimulation.
     The puritan is always trying to make it impossible for those things
which frighten him to exist.  He does not understand that sensibility is
not to be cured by protecting it from the obvious stimuli.  The diseased
tissue will merely begin to react to all sorts of contacts which have a
merely symbolic relation with the original perils.  This psychological fact
is at the basis of such phenomena as fetishism.  The saint hurries to the
Thebaid to avoid the danger of Thais, only to find that the very stones
rise up and take her place.  Neuburg had a friend who had a friend who was
an anarchist.  He would not drink cocoa "because it excited his animal
passions".

{652}


















     Little as I have seen of the Sahara, I have reconstructed its story in
outline to my own satisfaction.  I am convinced that the earth is slowly
losing its water and that this explains what one sees in the Mediterranean
basin, without assuming catastrophic changes in the earth's crust.  We know
the glaciers are generally retreating.  We know that in the time of Horace
snow fell heavily and lay long in the Roman winter.
     In Tunisia, the railway from Sousse to Sfax, which crosses the desert
like a chord whose arc is the bulge of the coast between these towns,
passes a village called El-Djemm.  This is an isolated spot; there is no
fertile country anywhere near it.  It consists of a cluster of Arab huts in
the gap of a coliseum.  This structure was at one time the headquarters of
a formidable gang of brigands and the gap was made by the artillery sent to
smoke them out.
     The point is that this coliseum is a tremendous affair.  The old town
must have sheltered at least five thousand people, more likely four times
than number.  How did these people live?  One is bound to assume that in
those days the country was fertile.  In the absence of rivers, this means
regular and plentiful rains.  Again, the northern districts of the Sahara
are full of large chott or lakes, many of which are below the present level
of the sea.  A French engineer, in fact, proposed to dig a canal from near
Sfax so as to replenish a string of chott which extends inland for about
two hundred and fifty miles.  He thought, and I agree, that the existence
of these vast shallow reservoirs would automatically change the climate, as
the irrigation of Egypt by English enterprises has made a perceptible
difference in that of Cairo within a decade.  The trouble is, how to keep
them from silting up.
     The upshot of all this is that many of the travellers' tales of people
like Pliny, Strabo and Plato need no longer be scouted as fantastic.  I at
least see no reason to doubt the existence of extensive civilizations in
North Africa within the last five thousand years.   Their decay and total
disappearance is explained quite easily by the gradual failure of the water
supply.  To the eye of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria
which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find
themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they
disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize
them.
     "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way" sounds splendid, but it is
really very silly.  Since I have understood that I am the Spirit of
Solitude, Alastor, I have learnt to look at life from a standpoint beyond
it.  The affairs of the parasites of the planet, including Aleister
Crowley, appear abject and absurd.  I cannot pretend to take them
seriously.  The only object in attaching oneself to an individual is to
have a standard suitable for symbolic representation of certain phenomena
which happen to interest one, though they cannot possibly possess any
importance for one, and the only reason

{653}



















for interesting oneself in the welfare of any such individual is to
increase the efficiency of one's instrument of perception.  This, then,
explains why the only intelligent course of action for a man is to obtain
initiation.  Even this is useless in itself.  The highest attainment is
insensate except in reference to the convenience of an intelligence who is
not in any way involved in the individuality of its instrument.

     The desert is a treasure house.  One soon gets behind the superficial
monotony.  Each day is full of exquisite incidents for the man who
understands how to extract the quintessence.  It is impossible to describe
such a journey as ours.  The events of a single day would fill a fat folio.
The more obvious adventures are really the least memorable, yet these are
the only things which are capable of description.  We were sometimes
obliged, for example, to push on at a great pace in order to reach a place
where we could renew our water supply.  On one occasion we covered a
hundred miles in two days and a half.  The last stage was pretty bad.  It
taught me a useful lesson about physical endurance.
     Most men who have practised athletics, even mildly, know the meaning
of the phrase "second wind".  One's original enthusiasm being exhausted,
one goes on quietly and steadily, almost unsusceptible to fatigue.  A
night's rest restores one completely; and, given proper food, one can go on
day after day for an indefinite period before getting stale.
     But few men, fortunately for themselves, know that there is such a
thing as "third" wind.  One's second wind wears off and one is overcome by
such severe fatigue that one cannot struggle against it.  One feels that
one must rest or break down entirely, as one did at the end of one's first
wind, only far more fiercely.  If, however, when one's second wind fails
one knows that life depends on going on, the third wind comes into court.
In this state one is almost anesthetized.  One has become an absolute
machine, incapable of feeling or thinking; one's actions are automatic.
The mind is just capable of making connections with such circumstances as
bear on the physical problem, though men of weak will, and those in whom
the habit of self-control is not established inexpugnably, are sometimes
subject to hallucinations.  The famous mirage is sometimes seen apart from
optical hallucination.  Delirium often occurs.
     There seems no reason why one should ever stop once one has got on to
this third wind.  I take it that one does so exactly as a steam engine
stops; when the physical conditions constrain one.
     Once one has got one's third wind a single night's repose is no longer
adequate; it seems as if one had outraged nature1.  I have found that
whether I walked on third wind one hour, or thirty-six, the reaction was
pretty much the same.  On this occasion we had to lie up for two days
before we

{654}


        1WEH Note:  This is confirmed by my experience in a 30 mile hike on
          Mt. Tam. in Marin County, California.  Second wind before
          attaining the peak, small heart stoppage of a second or so on
          attaining the height, second wind again on the way back after a
          rest, great exaustion, sudden cut into third wind and ran the
          last five miles --- at a rate impossible at the start of the
          hike!  It did take two days to recover.  During third wind, no
          pain; but the forest seemed suffused with a spectral light at
          dusk and strange lights moved in the sky.  Probably a consequence
          of opiate production in the brain as a result of extreme stress
          reaction.








could go on.  The psychology of this stage was interesting.  While we were
walking across totally featureless desert, we were simply unconscious,
entirely inaccessible to any impression; but the sight of an oasis, by
arousing hope, awoke us to a consciousness of our physical agony.  The last
mile was an interminable atrocity.  When we reached the palms the shade
gave us no relief whatever; the improved physical conditions simply
intensified our sufferings, for we could not rest before reaching the
houses.
     One of the effects of travel of this kind, as opposed to the regular
expedition, with its definite objective and its consequent insulation from
the current of ordinary life, is that every incident acquires an intense
and absolute value of its own.  One can, for example, love as it is utterly
impossible to do in any other conditions.  Every moment of one's life
becomes charged with unimaginable intensity, since there is nothing to
interfere with one's absorption.  The multiplicity of incident in civilized
life makes even the holiest honeymoon a medley; delight is dulled by
distraction.
     The secret of life is concentration, and I have attained this power
despite every original disadvantage, not so much by virtue of my
persistence in the practices which tend to improve one's technique, but by
my determination to arrange my affairs on the large scale so as to minimize
the possibilities of distraction.  The resolve to read no newspapers, to
see as few people as possible, to read or write during meals, to live so
that the petty problems of every day are as few and easily dispatched as
possible --- all these measures have made me less a man than the Spirit of
Solitude.  Every impression I receive is interpreted more analytically and
yields a more intense integration than a thousand such to most other men.
My life has been calm, simple, free from unusual or exciting incidents, and
yet I often feel that I have lived more fully than many men of affairs.
     Another result has naturally been that I have learnt to assess
experiences by a totally different scale from that of other people.  Some
points of view never strike me at all.  For instance, a publisher once
wrote to me, "We cannot publish such and such a book until" --- various
things happened, which had nothing to do with the contents of the book as
such.  I was literally aghast.  To me a book is a message from the gods to
mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.  Then what does it
matter who writes it, what the circumstances may be commercially, socially
or otherwise?  A message from the gods should be delivered at once.  It is
damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on.  How dare
the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and
most honourable to which a man can be called?  The only argument for
surrounding publication with any conditions is that the message may be
better understood in some circumstances than in others.  I can imagine a
series of syllogisms on which one might base an apology for many of the
actual principles of publishing.  The

{655}



















point, however, is that (as I suppose) the author is the hierophant or
oracle of some god, and the publisher his herald.
     I left Neuburg in Biskra to recuperate and returned to England alone.
No sooner had I settled in my compartment that I was seized by an
irresistible impulse to write a play dealing with the Templars and the
Crusades.  I had had with me in the desert the rituals of freemasonry,
those of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim Rites.  A plan had already been
mooted for me to reconstruct freemasonry, as will be later described.  The
ritual of the 30� had taken hold of my imagination.  The idea of my
proposed play, "The Scorpion", sprang into life full-armed.
     I have always found that unless I jump on such inspiration like a
tiger, I am never able to "recapture the first fine careless rapture".  I
accordingly jumped out of the train at El Kantara and wrote it that evening
and next day.  I had done little creative work during the walk.  My
Retirements, as a rule, especially when they involve physical hardship,
keep me in intimate communion with the universe and rarely dispose me to
write the result.  I lie fallow and the expression of ecstasy follows my
return to physical comfort and leisure.
     My last important work had been done at Marseilles on the way out,
where we had to wait two days for a boat to take us to Algiers.  I spent
the time in writing the essay on the Cabbala which appears in "The Equinox"
Vol. I, No. v.  I had no books of reference at hand and therefore put down
only what was in my memory.  This is a good plan.  It prevents one from
overburdening the subject with unimportant details.  In one's library one
is obsessed by the feeling that one should aim at completeness and this is
a grievous error.  One wants to include only those elements which have
proved their vitality by making a clear permanent impression on the mind.
     I am not sure and find no record of the writing of "The Blind
Prophet", but it may well have been during this wonderful week. It is an
attempt at a new form of art, a combination of ballet and grand opera.  The
predominant vowels in any passage indicate an appropriate passion.  Thus
"i" goes with shrillness and the violin; "o" and "u" coo, like flutes.  The
Blind Prophet represents the deep broad "a"; the Queen of the Dancers the
fluent "e".  With this sound scheme, goes a colour scheme.
     The Prophet is high-priest of a temple, and it is understood that if
he utters a certain word the building will be destroyed.  He woos the Queen
of the Dancers; she mocks and eludes him.  He utters the word; the pillars
fall and crush him, but nobody else is hurt.  The chorus rises again in the
identical melody of its original dance.
     The idea of the play is this: that the senseless forces of nature are
indestructible and obey no master.  The scheme of the rhythm and rime is
extremely complex and the execution extraordinarily fluent.  For sheer
verbal music

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it was one of the best things that I had done.  I found myself able to
introduce internal rimes at very short intervals, without in any way
interfering with the rhythm or the sense.  There is no distortion of
grammar, no difficulty in reading.

          Hush! hush! the young feet flush,
          The marble's ablush,
          The music moves trilling,
          Like wolves at the killing,
          Moaning and shrilling
          And clear as the throb in the throat
                of a thrush.

     During the journey I wrote "The Pilgrim", "Return" and "On the Edge of
the Desert", lyrics inspired by the idea of getting back to my inamorata in
London.
     In Paris I wrote "The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon".  The hero, Edgar
Rolles, meets a girl at the Taverne Panth�on (where I wrote the story) and
takes her to a fight between a white man and a Negro, the latter suggested
by Joe Jeannette, whom I had just seen and much admired for his physical
beauty.  He takes her to his studio and recognizes her as a member of the
order.  He proposes to put her through the ordeal of crossing the Abyss.
She fails and they part.  Ida meets the Negro, who loves her.  Rolles and
Ninon (Nina Olivier already mentioned) lunch with them.  Ida takes pleasure
in torturing the Negro and begs him to "respect her modesty" --- which she
has not got.  The Negro suddenly understands that she is heartless and
sinks his teeth in her throat.  Rolles kills him with a kick.  He then
consults one of the Secret Chiefs, who advises him to take Ida away.  He
tells Rolles that she has passed through the Abyss after all.  The formula
is that perfect love is perfect understanding.  He marries her and a year
later she dies in childbirth, saying that she has given herself three
times, once to the brute, once to the man and now to God.  Her previous
failure had been to surrender herself.  She wanted to get everything and
give nothing.
     This story marks a stage in my own understanding of the formula of
initiation.  I began to see that one might become a Master of the Temple
without necessarily knowing any technical Magick or mysticism at all.  It
is merely a matter of convenience to be able to represent any expression as
x + Y = 0.  The equation may be solved without words.  Many people may go
through the ordeals and attain the degrees of the A.'. A.'. without ever
hearing that such an Order exists.  The universe is, in fact, busy with
nothing else, for the relation of the Order to it is that of the man of
science to his subject.  He writes CaCl2 + H2SO4 = CaSO4 + 2HCl for his own
convenience and that of others, but the operation was always in progress
independently.

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     Arrived in England, my Pegasus continued its tameless spurt.  One
after the other I wrote "The Electric Silence", a fairy-story summary of my
magical career; "The Earth", a short essay on her, both as planet and as
element, in which I express my filial and conjugal relation with her.  It
is an ecstatic dithyramb.
     Finally I wrote "Snowstorm".  This is a play in three acts, but once
again I have tried to introduce a new artistic form.
    Leila Waddell was to play the part of the heroine, but as she was
incapable of speaking on the stage, I had to write her part as a series of
violin solos.
     The current of creative ecstasy stopped as suddenly as it had begun
and I went on from Eastbourne to London.  I found everything in confusion.
I did not realize that the "esprit de corps" which is the essence of such
books as "The Three Musketeers" was as dead as duelling.  The men who had
clustered round me enthusiastically when I seemed successful had dispersed
like the disciples when they found that the Pharisee meant business.  They
all knew perfectly well that the attacks on me were malicious nonsense,
that Jones's fiasco was a mere accident due to over-confidence; but they
were all, with very few exceptions, cowards to the bone.  They were as
afraid of nothing as so many babies in the dark, expecting to see the bogey
man come down the chimney.
     I suppose the proper thing would have been to have "rallied my
desperate followers", but the fact is that I am congenitally incapable of
beating the big drum.  Most leaders induce their followers to fight in
haste and leave them to repent at leisure.  I always feel that this sort of
thing is somehow unfair and in the long run useless.  I am content to wait
until people back me up wholeheartedly without the press gang or the
revival meeting.  I carried on imperturbably, exactly as if nothing
whatever had happened.  My utmost condescension was to print "X-Rays on Ex-
Probationers", three short contemptuous epigrams.

                         MISTAKES OF MYSTICS
     I. Since truth is supra-rational, it is incommunicable in the language
     of reason.
     II.  Hence all mystics have written nonsense, and what sense they have
     written is so far untrue.
     III.  Yet as a still lake yields a truer reflection of the sun than a
     torrent, he whose mind is best balanced will, if he become a mystic,
     become the best mystic.

     When a friend of mine, or an enemy either, gets into trouble, I go or
write to him immediately and put myself entirely at his disposition.  I
don't so much as ask whether he is in the right or no, unless that
knowledge is necessary to efficient help.  I can hardly explain why I act
in this extraordinary way, but I think the theory is somewhat as follows: I
being in relation with

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the man, he is a part of my individuality, and my duty to myself is to see
that he is flourishing.  If I sprain my ankle I must use all my resources
to put it right, and even if my ankle has damaged me in the course of the
accident, by allowing me to fall and bump my head, my interests are none
the less bound up with it.  I make no pretence of magnanimity; it is plain
self-interest which determines my action.  I am even simple enough to
expect everybody else to be equally selfish, but I have found that even my
best friends, with few exceptions, run away or cool off whenever I need
their assistance.
     I also find that I am not understood.  I remember an incident in
America.  A man who purported to be an occult teacher, and was in reality
an ignorant charlatan, had been the object of my onslaught.  He had every
reason to regard me as his bitterest enemy.  In course of time, he was
found out and arrested.  I went at once to the police court.  Only one of
his hundreds of devoted followers --- and they were extravagantly devoted,
thought he was no less than Jesus Christ come back to earth, and allowed
him to mock, bully and swindle them to the limit without losing faith in
him --- had stuck to him in his misfortune. I went to him and affirmed my
belief in his innocence (he had been "framed up" on a false charge) and
offered to go bail for him and help him in every possible way.  He was
acquitted and we resumed our enmity.
     I am glad to say that, some time afterwards, when some would-be
magicians sent spies round the country to get information about me from
people who did not know me, he spoke up on my behalf.  This could hardly
have happened in England, where moral cowardice is in the marrow of every
man's bones.  However vile and venal a man's accusers may be, and however
obviously absurd may be the charges brought against him, the very men who
have been boasting of their friendship for the great man scuttle into
obscurity --- at the best; more often, they join in the hue and cry in the
hope of escaping the suspicion of having once been in league with the
offender.  In England today a plain denial like Peter's must count as
extravagant loyalty!  To me the psychology is heartbreaking, not as it may
affect me directly, but because I hate to think so badly of men. The
standards of "The Three Musketeers" are mine, and the blackest blot in the
book is the partial failure of Aramis.  It is far worse than the conduct of
Milady at its vilest.
     I believed then, and believe now, that the probationer of A.'. A.'.
is nearly always offered the opportunity to betray the Order, just as the
neophyte is nearly always tempted by a woman.  We read in "The Book of the"
"Law", cap. I, verse 34:

"     "...the ordeals I write not: ..."

"     "... he"(the Beast)" may make severe the ordeals." (V.38)  "There is a word"
     "to say about the Hierophantic task.  Behold!  there are three ordeals"
     "in one, and it may be"

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"     "given in three ways.  The gross must pass through fire; let the fine"
     "be tried in intellect, and the lofty chosen ones in the highest. ..."
     (V.50)

"     "The ordeals thou shalt oversee thyself, save only the blind ones."
     "Refuse none, but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors.  I am Ra-"
     "Hoor-Khuit; and I am powerful to protect my servant. ..." (cap. III,
     v.42)

     These "blind" ordeals presumably refer to such tests of fitness as
that of which we have been telling.  In the ancient mysteries it was
possible to appoint formal ordeals.  A young man would go into the Temple
to be initiated and he would know perfectly well that his life might depend
on his proving himself worthy.  Nowadays he candidate knows that his
initiators will not murder him, and any ordeal proposed by them obviously
appears a pure formality.  In Freemasons' Hall he can swear quite
cheerfully to keep silence under the penalty of having his throat cut
across, his tongue torn out, and all the rest of it; the oath becomes a
farce.
     In the A.'. A.'., which is a genuinely Magical Order, there are no
extravagant oaths.  The candidate is pledged quite simply to himself only,
and his obligation binds him merely "to obtain the scientific knowledge of
the nature and powers of my own being".  There is no penalty attached to
the breach of this resolution; yet, just as this resolution is in contrast
with the oaths of other orders in respect of simplicity and naturalness, so
also with regard to the penalties.  To break away from the A.'. A.'.
does actually involve the most frightful dangers to life, liberty and
reason.  The slightest mistake is visited with the most inexorable justice.
     What actually happens is this.  When a man ceremonially affirms his
connection with the A.'. A.'. he acquires the full powers of the whole
Order.  He is enabled from that moment to do his true will to the utmost
without interference.  He enters a sphere in which every disturbance is
directly and instantly compensated.  He reaps the reward of every action on
the spot.  This is because he has entered what I may call a fluid world,
where every stress is adjusted automatically and at once.
     Thus, normally, suppose a man like Sir Robert Chiltern (in "An Ideal"
"Husband") acts venally.  His sin is visited upon him, not directly, but
after many years and in a manner which has no evident logical connection
with his offence.  If Chiltern had been a probationer of A.'. A.'. his
action would have been balanced at once.  He had sold an official secret
for money.  He would have found within a few days that one of his own
secrets had been betrayed, with disastrous consequence to himself.  But
furthermore, having switched on a current of disloyalty, so to speak, he
would have found disloyalty damaging him again and again, until he had
succeeded in destroying in himself the very possibility of ever again being
disloyal.  It would be superficial to regard this apparently exaggerated
penalty as unjust.  It is not sufficient

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to pay and eye for an eye.  If you have lost your sight, you do not stumble
over something once; you keep on stumbling, again and again, until you
recover your sight.
     The penalties of wrong-doing are applied not by the deliberate act of
the Chiefs of the order; they occur in the natural course of events.  I
should not even care to say that these events were arranged by the Secret
Chiefs.  The method, if I understand it correctly, may perhaps be
illustrated by an analogy.  Suppose that I had been warned by Eckenstein
always to test the firmness of a rock before trusting my weight to it.  I
neglect this instruction.  It is quite unnecessary for Eckenstein to go all
over the world and put unreliable rocks in my way --- they are there; and I
shall come across them almost every time I go out climbing, and come to
more or less grief whenever I meet them.  In the same way, if I omit some
magical precaution, or make some magical blunder, my own weakness will
punish me whenever the circumstances determine the appropriate issue.
     It may be said that this doctrine is not a matter of Magick by of
common sense.  True, but Magick "is" common sense.  What, then, is the
difference between the Magician and the ordinary man?  This, that the
Magician has demanded that nature shall be for him a phenomenal mode of
expressing his spiritual reality.  The circumstances, therefore, of his
life are uniformly adapted to his work.
     To take another analogy.  The world appears to the lawyer quite
otherwise than it does to the carpenter, and the same event occurring to
the two men will suggest two quite different trains of thought and lead to
two quite different results.
     My own errors of judgment, due to the annihilation of my ego and the
consequent lack of leadership felt by my body and mind, produced their own
immediate effect.  I did not yet understand the extent of my fault, or even
its real cause and character, but I felt myself forced back into my proper
orbit.  I was the Spirit of solitude, the Wander in the Wilderness.  I had
no business to take part in the affairs of men by personal contact with
them in their sheepfolds, monkey houses and pigstys.  My sole link with
them was to guide such as adventured themselves into the desert.  I was
cast out from the Abyss into "the heaven of Jupiter as a morning star or as
an evening star.  And the light thereof shineth even unto the earth and
bringeth hope and help to them that dwell in the darkness of thought and
drink of the poison of life."  It was therefore for me to attend strictly
to the Great Work which had been appointed for me by the Secret Chiefs, to
dwell in communion with mine Holy Guardian Angel and to write down the
instructions by following which men might attain "to the Summum Bonum, True
Wisdom and Perfect Happiness".

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                            P A R T   F I V E


                               THE MAGUS









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                              69


     I attended to the production of number five of "The Equinox", but
shortly after (my diary of 1911 is missing --- if, indeed, it was ever kept
--- so I am uncertain of my dates) I went into Retirement, spending my time
alternately between Paris and Montigny-sur-Loing on the southern edge of
the Forest of Fontainebleau.  It was immediately evident that I was in the
right path.  I had placed my body and mind entirely at the service of the
Master of the Temple who had filled the vacuum of the universe caused by
the annihilation of Aleister Crowley.  I kept my body in perfect condition
by walking almost every day to Fontainebleau and back, always choosing a
new way through the forest so that by the end of the summer I knew every
tree by name, as one might say.  I had acquired a boundless love for that
incomparable woodland, whose glorious beauty is still further hallowed by
the romance which lurks in every glade.  It was tame indeed in comparison
with a hundred other jungles which I had known, but for all that it
possesses an individual charm which endears it to me beyond any words of
mine to utter.  Nature herself opposed no obstacle to my wooing.  The
summer of 1911 was intensely hot and fine.  I have always found that dry
air is essential to the well-being either of my body or of my genius.  Damp
air seems to interfere with my insulation; my genius leaks away and leaves
me empty and depressed.
     This year indeed was another "annus mirabilis" for me.  There was an
almost continual outpouring of the Holy Spirit through my mind.  The spring
of poetry shot crystal clear from the hidden furnace of my being into the
pure and brilliant air, and fell and fertilized the earth about the sacred
hill.  A thousand years from now men will still gather round in wonder and
worship to gaze upon the gorgeous pageant of flowers that glow upon the
glowing grass and to feast upon the ripe fruits that burden the two great
trees which tower like pillars for a gateway to my garden --- the tree of
the knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.
     Let me first enumerate the comparatively profane achievements of these
few months.  Firstly, "Across the Gulf".  This is a prose story of some
twenty thousand words.  The theme is my own life in the 26th Dynasty, when
I was Ankh-f-n-khonsu and brought about the Aeon of Osiris to replace that
of Isis.  The story must not be taken as true in the ordinary sense of the
word, but as allegorical.
     I wrote many lyrics, but especially "The Sevenfold Sacrament".  This
poem subsequently appeared in the "English Review" and has often been
reprinted.  It

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is, one might say, a pendant to "Aha!"  It is one of my finest achievements
from a technical point of view and describes the actual experience of a
night which I spent at Montigny.  I was staying at an inn called the Vanne
Rouge, on the bank of the Loing overlooking a weir.  (The inn has since
then become fashionable and impossible; at that time it was adorable in
every way.)

          In eddies of obsidian,
          At my feet the river ran
          Between me and the poppy-pranky
          Isle, with tangled roots embanked,
          Where seven sister poplars stood
          Like the seven sisters of god.

          Soft as silence in mine ear,
          The drone and rustle of the weir
          Told in bass the treble tale
          Of the embowered nightingale.
          Higher, on the patient river,
          Velvet lights without a quiver
          Echoed through their hushed rimes
          The garden's glow beneath the limes.

          Then the sombre village, crowned
          By the castellated ground,
          Where in cerements of sable,
          One square tower and one great gable
          Stood, the melancholy wraith
          Of a false and fallen faith.
          Over all, supine, enthralling,
          The young moon, her faint edge falling
          To the dead verge of her setting,
          Saintly swam, her silver fretting
          All the leaves with light.  Afar
          Towards the Zenith stood a star,
          As of all worthiness and fitness
          The luminous eternal witness.

I described how the silence stripped me of myself; how I came once more
into the Abyss and was drawn thence into the most secret Temple of the Most
High, and there received the seven-fold sacrament.

          Nor is it given to any son of man
          To hymn that sacrament, the One in Seven,
          Where God and priest and worshipper,
          Deacon, asperger, thurifer, chorister,

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          Are one as they were one ere time began,
          Are one on earth as they are one in heaven;
          Where the soul is given a new name,
          Confirming with an oath the same,
          And with celestial wine and bread
          Is most delicately fed,
          Yet suffereth in itself the curse
          Of the infinite universe,
          Having made its own confession
          Of the mystery of transgression;
          Where it is wedded solemnly
          With the ring of space and eternity;
          And where the oil, the Holiest Breath,
          With its first whisper dedicateth
          Its new life to a further death.

This experience lasted throughout the night, and I describe the dawn, the
awakening of the world and myself to what men call reality.

          The trout leap in the shingly shallows.
          Soared skyward the great sun, that hallows
          The pagan shrines of labour and light
          As the moon consecrates the night.
          Labour is corn and love is wine,
          And both are bless�d in the shrine;
          Nor is he for priest designated.
          Who partakes only in one kind.

I suited the action to the word.
     There was also the poem "A Birthday", written on August 10th for Leila
Waddell, who was then twenty-six.  She had gone to England to fulfil an
engagement as leader of the Ladies' Orchestra in "The Waltz Dream".  The poem
describes the history of our liaison.
     I wrote also two short stories.  The hero of "The Woodcutter" is a
forester who "chops to live and lives to chop".  A silly Frenchman and his
mistress are wandering through the forest.  He fantastically exhorts the
woodcutter to make an art of his work, while the girl amuses herself by
trying to excite the old man's passions.  That night there is a
thunderstorm; and an English girl, who has lost her way, takes refuge in
his hut.  He combines the element of his thought during sleep, chops her to
pieces, stacks her limbs neatly by the hut, and goes off to his regular
work.  A rescue party discovers him.  The story ends, "They told him of a
widow lady in Paris who could beat him at his own game."

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     I am passionately indignant that the persistent beastliness of the
average mind insists that the woodcutter violated the girl.  Such a
suggestion completely ruins the point of the story, which is that his mind
had room for no idea of any kind except chopping.
     "His Secret Sin" was written on an idea given me by Neuburg.  I heard
afterwards it had already been used by "Punch".  It is admitted, of course,
that this kind of plagiarism is allowable.
     A prosperous English grocer is in Paris on business.  He wants
desperately to be "wicked", but is ashamed to inquire how these things are
done.  On the last day of his stay he is goaded to madness by seeing the
statue of Joan of Arc astride a horse.  He makes up his mind to buy an
indecent photograph at least and dives into a shop, where he asks for
something "tray sho".  The shopman contemptuously produces albums of
reproductions from the Louvre.  When he strikes the Venus of Milo, he
secrets it, pays half a sovereign in terror and slinks out of the shop.  He
keeps the photograph in his safe and brings it out at night and gloats.
     His daughter is attending art classes; for a colonel and his wife have
taken pity on her and tried to extricate her from her surroundings.  One
day she shows him some sketches one of which is the Venus of Milo herself.
Her father abuses her furiously.  She is "As bad as Cousin Jenny".  She
snatches the drawing, telling him not to touch sacred things.  His secret
sin has been visited on his child.  She is perfectly shameless in her
iniquity!  And then it strikes him that no decent art class would use such
a model.  He blurts out, "How did you get the key of my little safe?"  She
understands the whole thing and walks out of the house in disgust, never to
return.  He, overwhelmed by the judgment of God, determines to commit
suicide, after burning the accursed photograph.  But he cannot summon up
courage and flings the cocked pistol into the grate.  It explodes; the
bullet destroys one eye and cheek.  But he recovers.  The street boys take
to calling him "Old Venus" and his guilty conscience persuades him that
they have somehow heard the story.
     This tale is one of the most bitter truths that I have penned.  I am
glad to say that it is almost the only evidence of what I felt with regard
to the attitude of the English bourgeoisie towards art and sex; and, even
so, my picture of the younger generation bears witness to my unshakable
faith in the emancipation of my folk.  Indeed, I have not wrought in vain.
The young men and women of today, generally speaking, are as free from
superstitions and sexual shame as I would have them.  It is only a further
proof of this that the "old guard" are more desperately narrow and
fanatical than ever.  They are trying to stop drinking, smoking, dancing
and reading, by law.  Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
     I brought off an astounding double event in Paris, probably during
August.  I was at 50 rue Vavin and the idea of a dramatic poem or allegory
to be

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called "Adonis" came into my mind.  I went out for a "citron press�" at the
Caf� do D�me de Montparnasse, preliminary to settling down to write.  The
argument was almost complete in my mind and the rhythm was beginning to
flow through me.  But at the D�me were sitting my old mistress, Nina
Olivier, and her latest conquest, an unpleasant and cadaverous hypocrite
named Hener-Skene, whom I knew slightly from 1902, when he was posing as an
earnest Nietzchian.  With them was sitting a charming girl named (or
calling herself Fenella Lovell, a consumptive creature in gaudy and
fantastic rags of brilliant colours, who earned her living partly as a
model, partly as a "gypsy" fiddle and dancer.
     Skene and Nina had taken advantage of her sickness and poverty to
amuse themselves by whipping and otherwise ill-treating her.  It was not
honest sadism on Skene's part; it was a pose.  He thought it very glorious
to be a character in Krafft-Ebing.  They asked me to drink and introduced
me to Fenella.  Her pathetic beauty set me suddenly aflame with an idea to
make her the heroine of a little play.  My mind was swept clean of
"Adonis".  Then minutes later I was back in my room, furiously at work on
"The Ghouls".

"     "The Ghouls" is possibly the most ghastly death-dance in English
     literature.  If Oscar Wilde had written it (but he could not have)
     everyone would know it.  It is the very pith and marrow of terror.
     Cynical it may be, but I defy the lord of dreams to send any more
     plutonian nightmare to haunt our mortal sleep.

     This criticism (from the "Poetry Review") fills me with honest pride.
     I finished the play during the night and instantly picked up the idea
of "Adonis", which by an unparalleled "tour de force" I had kept intact at
the back of my mind.  I finished this play also straight off.  The most
remarkable point of this most remarkable achievement is that no two plays
could have been more dissimilar, either in theme or style.  "The Ghouls" is
prose, save for one short song, and ranges from the loftiest sublimity to
dialect and slang.  "Adonis" is poetry, mystic, sensuous and comic by turn;
much of it written in the elaborate and exquisite method of closely woven
rimes which I myself invented.
     Later in the summer, I set to work on a really large idea, a play of
Old Venice in five acts.  I kept my two main principles of composition; the
use of colour and form to distinguish my characters and compose a visible
symphony.

                             MORTADELLO

"     "The Doge" has white hair, and is seventy years of age.
"     "Mortadello" has hair died dark auburn, and forty years of age.  He is
          stout, tall and pompous.


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"     "Alessandro" has rough hair of fiery red and is thirty years of age.
"     "Lorenzo" has scanty ashen hair, and is twenty-eight years of age.
"     "Gabriele" is a hunchbacked dwarf, very strongly built, with a large and
          intellectual head.  He is bald, and is fifty years of age.
"     "Orlando" is of a gigantic stature, a full Negro.  He is forty years of
          age.
"     "The Legate" is an old and venerable man of ascetic and noble type.
"     "Magdalena" is a tall, robust and buxom woman of thirty-five years old.
          Her hair is black, but her complexion pale.
"     "Lucrezia" is a tall, robust and buxom woman of thirty-five years old.
          Her hair is of fine gold, her eyes of pale blue and her
          complexion fair and rosy.
"     "Zelina" is small and plump.  her hair is brown, and her age nine and
          twenty, though she looks older.
"     "Monica" is of medium height, very thin and serpent-like, her hair black
          and crisp; her features like Madonna's.  Her eyes are
          extraordinarily black, keen and piercing.  Her age is twenty.
          Her hands and feet are very small and white, her complexion like
          fine porcelain.
"     "The Abbess" is a gigantic and burly woman of fifty years old.

     My other principle of internal rimes I made more difficult for myself
than ever, by sticking throughout to the Alexandrine.  No English writer
has previously attempted to use this magnificent verse, no doubt, in part,
because of the danger of monotony.  This I avoided by introducing my
internal rime at all parts of the line.
     I quote from my own explanation.


     1.  "The Classical:"
     Ay, to this end, indeed was marriage first or"dained",
     And to this end today is by the Church sus"tained".
     2.  "Idem, marked by a rime:"
     Listen; in all good "faith", I gladly grant you "much",
     Not prone to scoff, and "scathe" the scutcheon with a "smutch".
     3.  "After the second foot:"
     Oh! but you're "hurt"!
               Young man! she shall be tended,
                                           "Well".
     No! take my "shirt"!  Staunch the dear beast.
                                               A mira"cle".
     4.  "After the fourth foot:"
     Serene, august, untroubled, "cold", her prayers are "worth"
     More than our steel, more than our "gold", that bind the "earth".
     5.  "After the first foot:"
     Bow "down" to the Cross!  His love purge thee!  His Passion "save thee!"

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     Christ "crown" the work!  Here is the blessing that He "gave thee".
     6.  "After both second and fourth feet:"
     Come, let me "hold" my crystal "cross" up to the "moon"!
     A guess of "gold" were at a "loss" to tell its "tune".
     7.  "After the first and fifth feet:"
     No "news"!  No word of Mortadello's "fate"!  No "hope"
     To "bruise" the head of the old snake, the "State".  No "scope".
     8.  "After the first half foot and the second foot:"
"     "Come", save me, "save" Thy Maiden!  Strike each barbed "dart"
"     "Home" to the "grave" convent and cloister of my "heart".
     9.  "After the fifth foot:"
     Last, to the lords who by their atti"tude applaud"
     This day of burial to faction, "feud" and "fraud".
     10. "After the second and fourth feet, but each line rimed within"
     "itself:"
     Of for the "blind" kiss of the "wind", the desert "air"
     Thrilling the "blue" and shrilling "through" my soul's desp"air".
     ("Thrilling" and "shrilling" are here thrown in without extra charge.
     This device frequently recurs.)

     There may be one or two other complications which I have over-looked.
     I have made use of the usual liberties in the matter of using anapests
and trochees for iambics.  With regard to double rimes, I have sometimes
treated them as single rimes, when they occur in the middle of a line;
sometimes I have made the line of thirteen syllables to suit them.
     I have even, once or twice, used the reverse method of calling a pause
a half foot.  "Stare, murderer, stare" counts as six syllables.
     All this has been done of high purpose; there is some inflection or
emphasis to be gained, or some tone to be given to the speech by the
irregularity.
     The argument of the play is simple.  Monica aims at becoming the
autocrat of Venice and succeeds.  In each scene is a definite action of the
highest pictorial, as well as dramatic, value that I could imagine.  The
play is full of violent scenes of love and murder.  I believe that I have
used three ideas entirely new in drama.
     1.  Monica has caused her Negro lover to murder the daughter of the
Doge, till then his mistress.  She bids him retrieve the corpse from the
canal, where he had thrown it.  The crime is concealed and the dead woman
is hidden as the guest of Monica.  She dresses up the corpse and has it
married to Mortadello in St. Mark's
     2. Monica, cornered in a crypt, is praying passionately while her
Negro lover is slain by their enemies.  Her hysteria produces the stigmata;
and this apparent proof of her sanctity overcomes the assailants, whose
leader she

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touches with the tip of a poisoned crucifix.  He dies on the spot; his
followers wish to fall at her feet, but she insists on being arrested.
     3.  Having forced Mortadello to marry her, she disguises herself as a
Saharan dancer and drugs him with hashish.  She then discloses her
identity; and he, in the madness of the drug, attacks the Papal legate.
She follows and, defending the old man, kills her husband.  This last
scene, by the way, fulfils my idea of true comedy; the dressing up of a man
as a king or god, and inducing him to preside at a hunting of which he is
in reality to be the quarry.  I have shown in my essay "Good Hunting!"
("The International", March 1918) that this central idea is universal in all
the best comedy and tragedy from the "Bacchae" of Euripides, the story of
Esther, the Crucifixion and the murder of Hiram Abif, to the plays of
Shakespeare, Ibsen and many others.
     I now turn to my magical writings during this astounding summer.
     In my spare time I began to make a list of Greek words connected with
Magick and similar subjects, arranging them by their numerical order.  The
idea was to construct a dictionary of the Greek Cabbala1 similar to that of
the Hebrew Cabbala on which I had been at work since 1899 and ultimately
published in "The Equinox", vol. I, No. viii.  But the Greek Cabbala presents
difficulties which do not arise in the case of Hebrew.  First, we have no
sacred text in Greek save a few imperfect and most unsatisfactory gnostic
documents2, the hopelessly garbled Apocalypse and a few oddments like the
Emerald Table of Hermes, the Divine Pymander and the Golden Verses of
Pythagoras.  Secondly, the various dialects of Greek affect the
computations and there is no means of choosing between them.  Thirdly, the
terminations alter the values.  It is even difficult to decide whether or
no to reckon the article.  Fourthly, the actual examples of Cabbala
existent are shamefully unconscientious, as may be seen by reference to
Messrs Lea and Bond's brochure.  The equate words and phrases quite
arbitrarily.  If it suits them to count the article they count it.
     That this Cabbala exists is nevertheless certain.  The correspondences
in the Apocalypse in connection with the series 111 to 999 is undeniably
intentional.  Nor can it be an accident that Mithras (360) was altered to
Meithras (365) to suit the correction of the calendar.  The matter is of
extreme importance; because Aiwass in dictating "The Book of the Law"
repeatedly makes use of correspondences in Greek, such as Thelema, Will, 93
--- Agape, Love, 93.  718 = Stele 666, and so on.  He also equates Greek
and Hebrew words.  Thus his own name spelt in Hebrew has the value 93, but
in Greek that of 418, thus bringing into relation the Word of the Law of
the Aeon with the Magical Formula of the Great Work.  My preliminary
studies, however, tended to discourage me, for the fourfold reason above
stated; and the proposed dictionary remains uncompleted to this day.
     During this summer I wrote no less than nineteen books of magical and

        1WEH Note:  This was to be published as "Liber MCCLXIV", but despite
          being cited in "Magick in Theory and Practice" it was not published
          in Crowley's lifetime.  The first publication came in the May
          1979 e.v. issue of "The O.T.O. Newsletter", pp. 9 to 44.
          Unfortunately, when I edited the material together for that
          publication, I discovered that the most interesting entries had
          been lost.  Crowley kept the Greek Cabbala on slips of paper in a
          cigar box.  Apparently, whenever he wanted to use some entry for
          his various writings, he fished out a slip from the box.  It
          would appear that he failed to replace most of the slips so
          extracted.  A search of his works will restore many of the
          missing entries.
        2WEH Note:  Wrong!  The works of Homer are considered the classical
          source, and both the "Septuagint" and Greek New Testament have been
          heavily used.






{672}


































































mystical instruction.  Each is characterized by the simplest, sublimest and
most concentrated prose of which I was master.  The sceptical attitude is
rigorously preserved; and, with the instructions already issued and a few
minor matters to which I attend later, they comprise an absolutely
comprehensive practical guide to every branch of the technique of spiritual
attainment.  The methods of every country, creed and clime, stripped of
their dogma and prejudice, are here presented scientifically and simply.
Besides these, there may be found certain methods prescribed in "The Book of"
"the Law" or invented by myself.  I will give a short synopsis of these
nineteen Instructions.
     "LIBER I."  The Book of the Magus.
     This is an inspired writing.  It describes the conditions of that
exalted Grade.  I had at this time no idea that I should ever attain to it;
in fact, I thought it utterly beyond possibility.  This book was given to
me that I might avoid mistakes when the time came for me to become a Magus.
It is impossible to give any idea of the terror and sublimity of this book,
while the accuracy of its predictions and of its descriptions of the state
of being, at that time wholly beyond my imagination to conceive, make it a
most astonishing document.
     "LIBER X."  This book is called "The Gate of Light".  It explains how
those who have attained initiation, taking pity upon the darkness and
minuteness of the earth, send forth a messenger to men.  The message
follows.  It is an appeal to those who, being developed beyond the average
of their fellows, see fit to take up the Great Work.  This Work is then
described in general terms with a few hints of its conditions.
     "LIBER XI" is a paraphrase of the instructions given in "The Book of the"
"Law" for invoking Nuit.
     "LIBER XVI", called "The Tower; or the House of God", describes a series
of meditation practices, the general method being to destroy every thought
that tends to arise in the mind by an act of will.  The thought must be
nipped in the bud before it reaches consciousness.  Further, the causes
which tend to produce any such thought must be discovered and annihilated.
Finally, this process must be extended to include the original cause behind
those causes.
     "LIBER LXIV" gives instruction in a method of summoning suitable persons
to undertake the Great Work.  It includes a powerful invocation of the god
of Truth, Wisdom and Magick.
     "LIBER LXVI".  The Book of the Ruby Star describes an extremely powerful
ritual of practical Magick; how to arouse the Magical Force within the
operator and how to use it to create whatever may be required.
     "LIBER XC".  The Book of the Hermetic Fish-Hook summons mankind to
undertake the Great Work.  It describes the conditions of initiation and
its results in language of great poetic power.
     "LIBER CLVI".  The Wall of Abiegnus (the Sacred Mountain of the
Rosicrucians) gives the formula of Attainment by devotion to our Lady

{673}



















Babalon.  It instructs the aspirant how to dissolve his personality in the
Universal Life.
     "LIBER CLXXV".  Astarte, The Book of the Beryl Stone, gives the complete
formula of Bhaki_Yoga; how one may unite oneself to any particular deity by
devotion.  Both magical and mystical methods are fully described.
     "LIBER CC".  The Book of the Sun.  Here are given the four Adorations to
the sun, to be said daily at dawn, noon, sunset and midnight.  The object
of this practice is firstly to remind the aspirant at regular intervals of
the Great Work; secondly, to bring him into conscious personal relation
with the centre of our system; and thirdly, for advanced students, to make
actual magical contact with the spiritual energy of the sun and thus to
draw actual force from him.
     "LIBER CCVI".  The Book of Breathing describes various practices of
controlling the breath, how to ensure success, what results to strive for,
and how to use them for the Great Work.
     "LIBER CCXXXI" is a technical treatise on the Tarot.  The sequence of
the 22 Trumps is explained as a formula of initiation.
     "LIBER CCCLXX", The Book of Creation or of the Goat of the Spirit,
analyses the nature of the creative magical force in man, explains how to
awaken it, how to use it and indicates the general as well as the
particular objects to be gained thereby.
     "LIBER CD" analyses the Hebrew alphabet into seven triads, each of which
forms a Trinity of sympathetic ideas relating respectively to the Three
Orders comprised in the A.'. A.'..  It is really an attempt to find a
Periodic Law in the system.
     "LIBER CDLXXIV".  The Book of the Mouth of the Abyss or of Knowledge.  A
course of study in philosophy is prescribed as a preliminary.  The aspirant
having assimilated all existing systems, he is instructed how to analyse
the nature of the reason itself and thus how to cross the Abyss on the
Intellectual Plane.  Having cleansed and renewed his mental faculties in
this way, he resumes his aspiration to the Knowledge and Conversation of
His Holy Guardian Angel, with whose reappearance he perfects his Magical
Powers so that he is ready to undertake the Work of annihilating the
universe, which, being done, he becomes a full Master of the Temple.
     "LIBER DLV".  This is a paraphrase of the instructions given in "The book"
"of the Law" for attaining Hadit.
     "LIBER DCCCXXXI", The Book of Vesta.  This book describes three main
methods of reducing the multiplicity of thoughts to one.  (The magical
method is to banish ceremonially the 32 parts of the universe in turn.  One
mystical method is to deny in consciousness that any part of the body or
mind is real.  Another is to stimulate the senses in turn with such
concentration as to put it out of gear.)

{674}






















     "LIBER DCCCLXVIII".  This is an analysis of the 22 letters.  To each is
attributed a magical or mystical practice of progressive difficulty until
attainment is complete.
     "LIBER CMXIII".  The Book of the Memory of the Path.  Here are given two
methods of acquiring the Magical Memory so as to enable the aspirant to
calculate his True Orbit in eternity.  The first method is to learn to
think backwards till he acquires the power of recalling the events of his
life in reverse chronological order.  The idea is to get back beyond one's
birth to one's previous death, and so on for many lives.  It should then be
easy to understand the general object of one's existence.  The second
(easier and surer) method is to consider every event in one's past,
determine the influence which each has had upon one's life, and by
synthesizing these forces, calculate their resultant; that is determine
one's general direction so as to be able to concentrate one's energies on
fulfilling the function for which one is fit.  Character, conduct an
circumstances are to be considered as terms of a complex dynamic equation.
This method is of extreme value to all.  It should be applied even to the
education of children so as not to force them into unnatural developments.
     These nineteen books were published in numbers six and seven of "The"
"Equinox".  During this summer, I also prepared the extremely important
account of the circumstances in which the stele was discovered and "The Book"
"of the Law" written, for number seven.  In this manner I published a
facsimile of the manuscript of that Book and my Comment thereon.  This
latter is shamefully meagre and incomplete.  The truth is, that despite
everything, I still felt an indescribable repugnance.  I knew well how
unworthy the Comment was as it stood, yet I could not force myself to work
on it, partly, no doubt, because I felt, as indeed I feel now, that nothing
I can write can possibly be worthy of or adequate to the text; but partly
also, from an instinctive fear and dislike of the subject.
     And so passed away this superb summer.  The autumn had a new
experience in store for me.  The current of my life was once more to be
suddenly turned; and as usual, this critical change came about as the
result of a series of casual chances.   I was caught in a web, some of
whose strands had been woven as early as 1902.  I must deal with this new
development in a new chapter.




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                              70


    That fertile passage through Paris on my return from Chogo Ri, which
had already born so much fruit in my life, had still some seed --- which
now came to harvest.  I have mentioned Nina Olivier, whom I loved so well
and sang so passionately.  In my sunlight she had blossomed into "La Dame de"
"Montparno", the Queen of the Quarter.  But I have not mentioned an obscure
prig whom I will call Monet-Knott, whom I had met through my fianc�e, the
"Star" to Nina's "Garter".  This brainless and conceited youth had become
accompanist to the greatest dancer of her generation.  Let me call her
Lavinia King.  She, first and never equalled, had understood and
demonstrated the art of dancing as a complete language of the affections of
the mind and heart.  Knott and Nina, as already recorded, had contracted a
liaison.  I met Knott for the second time when I was introduced to Fenella
Lovell and wrote "The Ghouls", as previously related.  I saw a fair amount
of him in the next few weeks; so that, running across him in London on
October 11th, he took me after supper to the Savoy to meet Miss King1.
     A boisterous party was in progress.  The dancer's lifelong friend,
whom I will call by the name she afterwards adopted, Soror Virakam, was
celebrating her birthday.  This lady, a magnificent specimen of mingled
Irish and Italian blood, possessed a most powerful personality and a
terrific magnetism which instantly attracted my own. I forgot everything.
I sat on the floor like a Chinese god, exchanging electricity with her.
    After some weeks' preliminary skirmishing, we joined battle along the
whole front; that is to say, I crossed to Paris, where she had a flat, and
carried her off to Switzerland to spend the winter skating.  Arrived at
Interlaken, we found that M�rren was not open, so we went on to St Moritz,
breaking the journey at Zurich.  This town is so hideous and depressing
that we felt that our only chance of living through the night was to get
superbly drunk, which we did ...
     (Let me emphasize that this wild adventure had not the remotest
connection with Magick.  Virakam was utterly ignorant of the subject.  She
had hardly so much as a smattering of Christian Science.  She had never
attended a s�ance or played Planchette.)
     ... "Lassati sed non satiati" by midnight, I expected to sleep; but was
aroused by Virakam being apparently seized with a violent attack of
hysteria, in

{676}


        1  This incident and its sequel are described in "The Net", chapter
          one.




















which she poured forth a frantic torrent of senseless hallucination.  I was
irritated and tried to calm her.  But she insisted that her experience was
real; that she bore an important message to me from some invisible
individual.  Such nonsense increased my irritation.  But --- after about an
hour of it --- my jaw fell with astonishment.  I became suddenly aware of a
coherence in her ravings, and further that they were couched in my own
language of symbols.  My attention being thus awakened, I listened to what
she was saying.  A few minutes convinced me that she was actually in
communication with some intelligence who had a message for me.
     Let me briefly explain the grounds for this belief.  I have already
set forth, in connection with the Cairo working, some of the safeguards
which I habitually employ.  Virakam's vision contained elements perfectly
familiar to me.  This was clear proof that the man in her vision, whom she
called Ab-ul-Diz, was acquainted with my system of hieroglyphics, literal
and numerical, and also with some incidents in my magical career.  Virakam
herself certainly knew nothing of any of these.  Ab-ul-Diz told us to call
him a week later, when he would give further information.  We arrived at St
Moritz and engaged a suite in the Palace Hotel.
     My first surprise was to find that I had brought with me exactly those
Magical Weapons which were suitable for the work proposed and no others.
But a yet more startling circumstance was to come.  For the purposes of the
Cairo working, Ouarda and I had brought two abbai; one, scarlet, for me;
one, blue, for her.  I had brought mine to St Moritz; the other was of
course in the possession of Ouarda.  Imagine my amazement when Virakam
produced from her trunk a blue abbai so like Ouarda's that the only
differences were minute details of gold embroidery!  The suggestion was
that the Secret Chiefs, having chosen Ouarda as their messenger, could not
use anyone else until she had become irrevocably disqualified by insanity.
Not till now could her place be taken by another; and that Virakam should
possess a duplicate of her Magical Robe seemed a strong argument that she
had been consecrated by them to take the place of her unhappy predecessor.
     She was very unsatisfactory as a clairvoyant; she resented these
precautions.  She was a quick-tempered and impulsive woman, always eager to
act with reckless enthusiasm.  My cold scepticism no doubt prevented her
from doing her best.  Ab-ul-Diz himself constantly demanded that I should
show "faith" and warned me that I was wrecking my chances by my attitude.
I prevailed upon him, however, to give adequate proof of his existence and
his claim to speak with authority.  The main purport of his message was to
instruct me to write a book on my system of mysticism and Magick, to be
called "Book Four", and told me that by means of this book, I should prevail
against public neglect.  It saw no objection to writing such a book; on
quite rational grounds, it was a proper course of action, I therefore
agreed to do

{677}





















so.  But Ab-ul-Diz was determined to dictate the conditions in which the
book should be written; and this was a difficult matter.  He wanted us to
travel to an appropriate place.  On this point I was not wholly satisfied
with the result of my cross-examination.  I know now that I was much to
blame throughout.  I was not honest either with him, myself or Virakam.  I
allowed material considerations to influence me, and I clung --- oh triple
fool! --- to my sentimental obligations towards Laylah.
     We finally decided to do what he asked, though part of my objection
was founded on his refusal to give us absolutely definite instructions.
However, we crossed the passes in a sleigh to Chiavenna, whence we took the
train to Milan.  In this city we had a final conversation with Ab-ul-Diz.
I had exhausted his patience, as he mine, and he told us that he would not
visit us any more.  He gave us his final instructions.  We were to go to
Rome and beyond Rome, though he refused to name the exact spot.  We were to
take a villa and there write "Book Four".  I asked him how we might recognize
the right villa.  I forget what answer he gave through her, but for the
first time he flashed a message directly into my own consciousness.  "You
will recognize it beyond the possibility of doubt or error," he told me.
With this, a picture came into my mind of a hillside on which were a house
and garden marked by two tall Persian nuts.
     The next day we went on to Rome.  Owing to my own Ananias-like attempt
to "keep back part of the price", my relations with Virakam had become
strained.  We reached Naples after two or three quarrelsome days in Rome
and began house-hunting.  I imagined that we should find dozens of suitable
places to choose from, but we spend day after day scouring the city and
suburbs in an automobile, without finding a single place to let that
corresponded in the smallest degree with our ideas.
     Virakam's brat --- a most god-forsaken lout --- was to join us for the
Christmas holidays, and on the day he was due to arrive we motored out as a
forlorn hope to Posilippo before meeting him at the station at four o'clock
or thereabouts.  But the previous night Virakam had a dream in which she
saw the desired villa with absolute clearness.  (I had been careful to say
nothing to her about the Persian nuts, so as to have a weapon against her
in case she insisted that such and such a place was the one intended.)
     After a fruitless search we turned our automobile towards Naples,
along the crest of Posilippo.  At one point there is a small side lane
scarcely negotiable by motor, and indeed hardly perceptible, as it branches
from the main road so as to form an acute-angled "Y" with the foot towards
Naples.  But Virakam sprang excitedly to her feet and told the chauffeur to
drive down it.  I was astonished, she being hysterically anxious to meet
the train, and our time being already almost too short.  But she swore
passionately that the villa was down that lane.  The road became constantly
rougher and narrower.

{678}





















After some time, it came out on the open slope; a low stone parapet on the
left protecting it.  Again she sprang to her feet.  "There", she cried,
pointing with her finger, "is the villa I saw in my dream!"  I looked.  No
villa was visible.  I said so.  She had to agree; yet stuck to her point
that she saw it.  I subsequently returned to that spot and found that a
short section of wall, perhaps fifteen feet of narrow edge of masonry, is
just perceptible through a gap in the vegetation.
     We drove on; we came to a tiny piazza, on one side of which was a
church.  "That is the square and the church", she exclaimed, "that I saw in
my dream!"
     We drove on.  The lane became narrower, rougher and steeper.  Little
more than a hundred yards ahead it was completely "up", blocked with heaps
of broken stone.  The chauffeur protested that he would be able neither to
turn the car nor to back it up to the square.  Virakam, in a violent rage,
insisted on proceeding.  I shrugged my shoulders.  I had got accustomed to
these typhoons.
     We drove on a few yards.  Then the chauffeur made up his mind to
revolt and stopped the car.  On the left was a wide open gate through which
we could see a gang of workmen engaged in pretending to repair a ramshackle
villa.  Virakam called the foreman and asked in broken Italian if the place
was to let.  He told her no; it was under repair.  With crazy confidence
she dragged him within and forced him to show her over the house.  I sat in
resigned disgust, not deigning to follow.  Then my eyes suddenly saw down
the garden, two trees close together.  I stooped.  Their tops appeared.
They were Persian nuts!  The stupid coincidence angered me, and yet some
irresistible instinct compelled me to take out my notebook and pencil and
jot down the name written over the gate --- Villa Caldarazzo.  Idly, I
added up the letters 6 + 10 + 30 + 30 + 1 and 20 + 1 + 30 + 4 + 1 + 200 + 1
+ 7 + 7 + 70.  Their sum struck me like a bullet in my brain.  It was 418,
the number of the Magical Formula of the Aeon, a numerical hieroglyph of
the Great Work!  Ab-ul-Diz had made no mistake.  My recognition of the
right place was not to depend on a mere matter of trees, which might be
found almost anywhere.  Recognition beyond all possibility of doubt was
what he promised.  He had been as good as his word.
     I was entirely overwhelmed.  I jumped out of the car and ran up to the
house.  I found Virakam in the main room.  The instant I entered I
understood that it was entirely suited for a Temple.  The walls were
decorated with crude frescoes which somehow suggested the exact atmosphere
proper to the Work.  The very shape of the room seemed somehow significant.
Further, it seemed as if it were filled with a peculiar emanation.  This
impression must not be dismissed as sheer fancy.  Few men but are
sufficiently sensitive to distinguish the spiritual aura of certain
buildings.  It is impossible not to feel reverence in certain cathedrals
and temples.  The most ordinary

{679}




















dwelling-houses often possess an atmosphere of their own; some depress,
some cheer; some disgust, others strike chill to the heart.
     Virakam of course was entirely certain that this was the villa for us.
Against this was the positive statement of the people in charge that it was
not to be let.  We refused to accept this assertion.  We took the name and
address of the owner, dug him out, and found him willing to give us
immediate possession at a small rent.  We went in on the following day and
settled down almost at once to consecrate the Temple and begin the book.
     The idea was a follows.  I was to dictate; Virakam to transcribe, and
if at any point there appeared the slightest obscurity --- obscurity from
the point of view of the entirely ignorant and not particularly intelligent
reader;  in a word, the average lower-class man in the street --- I was to
recast my thoughts in plainer language.  By this means we hoped to write a
book well within the compass of the understanding of even the simplest-
minded seeker after spiritual enlightenment.
     Part One of "Book Four" expounds the principles and practice of
mysticism in simple scientific terms stripped of all sectarian accretion,
superstitious enthusiasms or other extraneous matter.  It proved completely
successful in this sense.
     Part Two deals with the principles and practice of Magick.  I
explained the real meaning and "modus operandi" of all the apparatus and
technique of Magick.  Here, however, I partially failed.  I was stupid
enough to assume that my readers were already acquainted with the chief
classics of Magick.  I consequently described each Weapon, explained it and
gave instructions for its use, without making it clear why it should be
necessary at all. Part Two is therefore an wholly admirable treatise only
for one who has already mastered the groundwork and gained some experience
of the practice of the art.
     The number 4 being the formula of the book, it was of course to
consist of four parts.  I carried out this idea by expressing the nature of
the Tetrad, not only by the name and plan of the book, but by issuing it in
the shape of a square 4 inches by 4, and pricing each part as a function of
4.  Part One was published at 4 groats, Part Two at 4 tanners, Part Three
was to cost 3 "Lloyd George groats" (at this time the demagogue was
offering the workman ninepence for fourpence, by means of an insurance
swindle intended to enslave him more completely than ever).  Part Four, 4
shillings.  Part Three was to deal with the practice of Magick, and Part
Four, of "The Book of the Law" with its history and the Comment; the volume,
in fact indicated in the Book itself, chapter III, verse 39.
     The programme was cut short.  The secret contest between the will of
Virakam and my own broke into open hostility.  A serious quarrel led to her
dashing off to Paris.  She repented almost before she arrived and
telegraphed

{680}





















me to rejoin her, which I did, and we went together to London.  There,
however, an intrigue resulted in her hastily marrying a Turkish adventurer
who proceeded to beat her and, a little later, to desert her.  Her hysteria
became chronic and uncontrollable; she took to furious bouts of drinking
which culminated in "delirium tremens".
     The partial failure of our partnership was to some extent, without
doubt, my own fault.  I was not whole-hearted and I refused to live by
faith rather than by sight.  I cannot reproach myself for this; for that, I
have no excuse.  I may nevertheless express a doubt as to whether full
success was in any case possible.  Her own masterless passions could hardly
have allowed her to pass unscathed through the ordeals which are always
imposed upon those who undertake tasks of this importance.
     The upshot has been that, although I dictated Part Three to Laylah in
the spring of 1912, I felt that it was not sufficiently perfect to be
published.  From time to time I revised it; but it remained unsatisfactory
until in 1921 I took it in hand seriously, practically rewrote it and
expanded it into a vast volume, a really complete treatise on every branch
of Magick.  Part Four is still incomplete.  I feel that I cannot publish
the Comment on "The Book of the Law" until I am absolutely satisfied with it,
and there is still much work to be done.
     My midwinter wandering was so wholly taken up with Virakam that there
was no adventure of interest to recount, with one exception.  In Naples we
had a sitting with the famous Eusapia Palladino.
     Her claim to extraordinary powers rests entirely on the famous report
of Messrs Feilding, Baggalay and Carrington.  Feilding I knew personally
very well.  I had cross-examined him repeatedly about her without shaking
his testimony.  I met Baggalay once or twice and his evidence corroborated
Feilding's.  When I came to know Carrington later, I found myself unable to
attach serious credit to anything he said, and it certainly seemed
suspicious that he should have acted as impresario to Eusapia shortly
afterwards and exploited her in the United States.
     Besides this, I had analysed carefully the printed reports of the
sittings.  I could find no loophole; until one day my precious memory came
to the rescue.  It told me what is not by any means apparent on a
straightforward reading, that in one of the s�ances, I think number six, no
phenomena occurred in the cabinet.  Somewhere else in the book, quite
disconnectedly, we find that during this s�ance there was no table in the
cabinet.  "Aha!" said I, "so when the trumpets and tambourines and so on
are really out of her reach (never mind whether her arms are under control
or not!) she cannot sound them."  It may seem arbitrary and unjust; but to
me that one fact knocked away the props from the whole structure.
     I had had sittings with many celebrated mediums and never seen any

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phenomena which impressed me in the least as being caused by occult forces.
(It is to be remembered that I have seen so many phenomena of absolutely
indubitable authenticity in the course of my magical work that I am
predisposed to expect such things to happen.)
     In sitting with Eusapia, my main objects were first to get an idea of
the atmosphere, so as to visualize more clearly the events recorded in the
famous report, and second to criticize my own evidence.  The question had
suggested itself: "Feilding and the rest are clever, wary, experienced and
critical, but even so, can I be sure that when they describe what occurs
they are dependable witnesses?"  As luck would have it, my single s�ance
threw a glaring light on this point.
     Eusapia was sitting at the end of a table with her back to the
cabinet.  Virakam was on her right, I on her left.  It was my business to
make sure that she did not kick and to keep hold of her left writs.  After
a short time the fun began in the customary manner by the curtain of the
cabinet bulging and finally falling across Eusapia's left arm and my right.
I could thus see into the cabinet, that is, into the corner of the room, by
turning my head.  Now, Eusapia was supposed to have a third arm, an astral
arm, with which she could do her deadly deeds.  My attention was attracted
to the cabinet by seeing a shadowy arm moving about it it.  My intellectual
faculties were completely alert.  I reasoned as follows: "The arm which I
see is a left arm, not a right arm.  It cannot therefore be Eusapia's left
arm, because I am holding her left wrist with my right hand."  Almost
before I had completed this syllogism, the arm disappeared from the
cabinet; at the same moment I felt Eusapia replace her left wrist in my
hand, which had not informed me that she had removed it.
     It is a small premise on which to found an universal proposition and
yet I do so without serious hesitation.  I dare not for a moment compare
myself with such expert investigators as Feilding and the rest.  Still, I
have some experience.  I am not entirely an ass and I certainly know a
great deal about psychology for one thing, and the unreliability of sensory
impressions for another.  "Ex pede Herculem".  If I, such as I am, cannot be
relied upon to say whether I am or am not holding a woman's wrist, is it
not possible that even experts, admittedly excited by the rapidity with
which one startling phenomenon succeeds another, may deceive themselves as
to the conditions of the control?  It seems to me extremely significant
that Feilding has never obtained a cabinet phenomenon with any medium when
he has interposed netting between the man and the curtain.
     Feilding invited me to some of the s�ances of the then famous medium
Caracini, who had been turning Rome upside down by turning tables upside
down, teaching grand pianos the turkey-trot and materializing mutton chops.
I was inclined at first to believe that there was some slight

{682}






















element of genuineness in the man for the simple reason that he failed to
bring off anything at all in my presence.  The trumpery elementals that
amuse themselves at the expense of the spiritist type of imbecile keep very
clear of Magicians.  (Readers of Eliphas L�vi will remember that D.D.Home
was panic-stricken at the approach of the adept.)  After two hours of
watchful waiting Feilding suggested trying for cabinet phenomena.  The
cabinet was, as usual, a corner of the room with a cloth pinned across,
behind this being a table furnished with trumpets, tambourines and similar
baitful bogies.  At the suggestion Carcini sprang from his seat and
extended his hands towards the upper part of the curtain.  I required no
further information.  There was nothing suspicious in his act but the
psychology was final.  There was an association in his mind between cabinet
phenomena and physical manipulation.
     I take this opportunity of pointing out that no cabinet phenomena of
any sort have ever taken place when netting has been placed between the
curtain and the medium.  We can hardly conceive of any type of force
capable blowing trumpets, impressing wax, etc., which would be intercepted
by netting, except that normal to humanity.
     May I further remark that, in our generation, no professional medium
has ever produced evidential phenomena of any kind with the exception of
Eusapia Palladino, Mrs Piper, Eva C. (if she can be classed as
professional) and Bert Reece.  I have dealt already with Eusapia.  I never
met Mrs Piper, but her record somehow fails to impress me as remarkable.
Eva C. is still "sub judice" and I will now deal with Bert Reece, after
permitting myself the single observation that spiritists who talk about the
cumulative value of their evidence have only four doubtful integers to add
to an interminable string of zeros.
     I met Bert Reece in London just before the war of 1914.  His claim to
fame was based on two items.  First, if you put your hand on his head you
could sometimes feel a throbbing, which of course proves beyond all
possibility of a doubt the immortality of the soul.  In this calculation I
have adopted the official American standard of proof.  Second, he was able
to read and answer questions which had been previously written on slips of
paper in his absence (presumed), folded up and distributed in various
pockets.  Having answered the first question a paper was handed to him; he
then answered the second and so on.
     This "modus operandi" suggests that he relies for success on some
variation of the trick known as "the one after", though I personally
believe that he changes his methods as much as he can.  It seems perfectly
obvious in any case that a trick of some sort is being worked.
     The real point of interest is that Hereward Carrington, who boasts
that he has explained every single "sealed letter reading" that has come
under his

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notice, admits failure to explain this case, and he has assured me
personally that he is completely baffled and inclined to believe that some
occult power is at work.
     Bert Reece is an Americanized German or Polish Jew from Posen.  He
was, I suppose, at this time about sixty years old.  He commanded enormous
fees for consultations.  Many of the biggest business men in the States
acted habitually on his advice.  My own interest was limited to the
curiosity aroused by Carrington's statement.
     I went to see him at the Savoy Hotel in London.  His personality is
delightful and he received me with charming courtesy.  He then asked me to
write five questions on five slips of paper as usual, fold them, and put
them in separate pockets.  I said that I could not possibly think of
troubling him to that extent.  I should be prefectly convinced if he would
read a word of three letters already in my pocket.  (I had put the word TIN
inside the back of my watch.)  He of course refused the test and I knew
where I was.  However to humour him, and incidentally to observe his
method, I did as he asked.  Some of my questions were such that he was
unlikely to know the answer.  Others concerned the Cabbala.  In one case I
did not know the answer myself; but if he was really in touch with a high
intelligence he could find out and I could check his correctness by the
method elsewhere explained.
     He read my questions correctly, but failed to answer any of them.
Before answering the first time he made a number of suspicious movements
that inclined me to think that he manages to pick one's pocket of the first
slip after which, of course, the "one after" method proceeds merrily.
     I called on him in New York early in 1915 with the idea of trying him
out by offering him a share of the proceeds of persuading one of my friends
to invest in a certain financial scheme.  (Needless to say, my friend was a
party to the plan.)  Reece agreed without hesitation.  I simply told him to
answer the questions in such a way as to persuade the inquirer of certain
facts.  As luck would have it the test was even more conclusive than I had
arranged for.  In one of the questions a certain man's name occurred.
According to my arrangement with Reece, he should have answered that this
man was not to be trusted.  The name bears a distinct resemblance to my
own.  He jumped to the conclusion that I was meant and praised the man up
to the skies.
     There was still one more sitting.  He was to do his utmost to persuade
his consultant to adopt a certain course of action.  He tried every trick
for the best part of an hour, without producing the slightest result.  The
atmosphere was one of cold disgust, mixed with a certain contemptuous pity.
At the same time, one could not but understand that, given the original
"sine qua non", he could lead his client by the nose into the most absurd
actions.  This "prima materia" of the work need not be the pure gold of
confidence.  It is

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quite sufficient if the client is morally and mentally unstable from fear,
credulity, anxiety, desire or even natural uncertainty --- this last being,
of course, an evident condition of any serious consultation whatever.  Give
him something to work on and little by little one is bound to fall into his
line of thought, after which it is child's play to turn every incident to
advantage.  The client will come away from the consultation convinced of
the supernatural powers of the charlatan.
     From the beginning of my investigation of so-called psychical
research, I felt sure from mere consideration of the conditions of the
problem that the adhesion of so many prominent men of science to spiritism
must be explained by psychological facts.  This saved me a great deal of
time.  The first key that I tried fitted the lock.
     I noted immediately that the scientific men concerned were in some
cases, though not in all, indisputably trustworthy as observers.  They were
capable of detecting fraud and of devising methods to exclude it.  I was
faced with the alternative of accepting the hypothesis of spiritism, which
revolts my scientific spirit and is repudiated, by my instinct as an
initiate, for a foul blasphemy and profanation, or I must find some reason
for supposing that a number of men reputed trustworthy observers are for
some reason rendered suddenly incompetent.
     I have said a number of prominent men of science, but in point of fact
very few of them have any sort of claim to rank in the first flight.
However, such as they are, it is certainly curious that their first leaning
towards spiritism becomes manifest on their reaching an age when the sexual
power begins to decline.
     I submit the following explanation of the psychological process of
conversion in these cases.
     1.  The failure of the sexual energy turns their attention to death.
     2.  The inexpugnable fear of death demands the resort to some
spiritual soporific.
     3.  Their scientific training makes it impossible for them to take
refuge in any superstitious religion.
     3a.  They probably lack the pagan courage to accept the situation
philosophically, their moral integrity having been injured in childhood by
their Christian upbringing.
     4.  They seek consolation in some theory of immortality which promises
to verify its theses by scientific evidence such as they are accustomed to
accept.
     5.  They approach their first s�ances with a subconscious will-to-
believe of great intensity.
     6.  They are sufficiently aware of this attitude to make a point of
exaggerating their scepticism to themselves; that is, they affirm their
scepticism with

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an emphasis the more passionate in proportion as they hope, at the bottom
of their hearts, to find sufficient evidence to shake it.
     7.  They satisfy their consciences by making a great display of their
acuteness in detecting fraud, actual or possible, and thereby excuse
themselves for adding, as if by afterthought, "obviously there are a few
minor points whose explanation is not immediately obvious."
     8.  They concentrate their attention on these unexplained points until
they fill the entire point of view.
     9.  What with overstrained attention, Freudian forgetfulness and the
illusions of desire, they quiet their consciences sufficiently to assert
the genuineness of some few of the phenomena, preferably those which are,
so to speak, the thin end of the wedge and are explicable on hypotheses not
fundamentally repugnant to the main body of scientific truth.
     10.  The critical attitude of their colleagues excites the usual
reaction and rouses them to defend vigorously propositions originally put
forward tentatively under every reserve.
     11. Feeling their sand castle crumbling with each wave of the
purifying salt water of criticism, they shovel fresh sand to the support of
the threatened edifice.  In their haste and eagerness they abandon all
pretence of examining the quality of the material and no longer distinguish
between the qualities of evidence.
     12.  It is now quite easy for mediums to persuade them that they are
chosen captains of a crusade.  Even when they continue their original
methods of testing the genuineness of phenomena, the mediums have become
familiar with their methods and found out how to circumvent them.  In the
words of Browning: "So off we push."
     So much for the so-called scientific contingent.  Browning's "Mr
Sludge, 'The Medium'" is to me the deepest and completest psychological
study ever written.  I only wish it could be matched by a parallel exposure
of the half-hidden perversities and trickeries of the scientific mind.










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                              71


     The spring of 1912 found me once more hovering between London and
Paris.  I wrote a few first-rate lyrics, a few more or less important
essays, such as "Energized Enthusiasm", but on the whole, the virtue had
gone out of me as far as big conceptions and elaborate executions were
concerned.  The campaign of 1911 had exhausted my heavy ammunition for the
time being.
     None the less, I could point to one solid achievement on the large
scale, as I must consider it, although it is composed of more or less
disconnected elements.  I refer to "The Book of Lies".  In this there are
ninety-three chapters: we count as a chapter the two pages filled
respectively with a note of interrogation and a mark of exclamation.  The
other chapters contain sometimes a single word, more frequently from half a
dozen to twenty phrases, occasionally anything up to a dozen paragraphs.
The subject of each chapter is determined more or less definitely by the
Cabbalistic import of its number.  Thus, Chapter 25 gives a revised ritual
of the Pentagram; 72 is a rondel with the refrain "Shemhamphorash", the
Divine name of 72 letters; 77 Laylah, whose name adds to that number; and
80, the number of the letter P�, referred to Mars, a panegyric upon war.
     Sometimes the text is serious and straightforward, sometimes its
obscure oracles demand deep knowledge of the Cabbalah for interpretation;
others contain obscure allusions, play upon words, secrets expressed in
cryptogram, double to triple meanings which must be combined in order to
appreciate the full flavour; others again are subtly ironical or cynical.
At first sight the book is a jumble of nonsense intended to insult there
reader.  It requires infinite study, sympathy, intuition and initiation.
Given these, I do not hesitate to claim that in none other of my writings
have I given so profound and comprehensive an exposition of my philosophy
on every plane.  I deal with the inmost impulses of the soul and through
the whole course of consciousness down to the reactions of the most
superficial states of mind.
     I consider this book so important as a compendium of the contents of
my consciousness that I beg leave to illustrate the above points.
     "Mind is a disease of semen" asserts a theory of the relations between
the conscious and subconscious, whose main thesis is that the true ego
lurks silent in the quintessence of physical form, whereas the conscious
self is no more than the murmur of its moods whenever its supremacy is
challenged by environment.  In Chapter 37, thought is compared to the
darkness of a

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lunar and spiritual ecstasy to that of a solar eclipse.  Both shadows are
rare accidents in a universe of light.  Again, "In the Wind of the mind
arises the turbulence called I.  It breaks; down shower the barren
thoughts.  All life is choked."  Elsewhere, deep spiritual wisdom is evoked
by tea at Rumpelmayer's, dinner at Lap�rouse, breakfast at the Smoking Dog,
a walk in the forest, or the dealings of the Master with his disciples.
     Let me further brag that even uninstructed souls have found
enlightenment and ecstasy in these mysterious mutterings.
     One brilliant boy wrote in "Poetry and Drama" as follows:

          Creation and destruction of gods has been for centuries mankind's
     favourite religious mania and philosophical exercise.  "The Book of"
     "Lies" is a witty, instructive and wholly admirable collection of
     paradoxes, in themselves contradictory, summing up and illustrating
     various experiments in god-making.  Frater Perdurabo, however, has not
     written a philosophical or mystical treatise; on the contrary, his
     book leaves one with a feeling of intense exhilaration and
     clearheadedness.  The book cannot be judged by the mere reading of
     excerpts; nor can it be read straight through.  Indeed, if one is
     really desirous to appreciate its subtleties, this should not be
     attempted before twelve p.m.  To be carried about and discussed at
     leisure, to annoy, repel, stimulate, puzzle and interest, are
     evidently some of its functions.  Stupendously idiotic and amazingly
     cleaver, it is at the same time the quintessence of paradox and
     simplicity itself; yet when all this is said one is still far from the
     core, for just when one thinks to have discovered it, one finds that
     many obvious beauties of thought and expression have been overlooked,
     others misinterpreted.  Sometimes one is even doubtful if the author
     himself could translate into definite terms the exact meaning of his
     aphorisms and paradoxes without detracting from the value of the book
     as an artistic expression of his personality.  This is, however, an
     individual appreciation.  "The Book of Lies" will therefore be
     interpreted differently by each reader and judged accordingly.

     The best short story, as some think, that I have ever written belongs
to 1912, "The Testament of Magdalen Blair".  The idea was based on a
suggestion of Allan Bennett's made in 1899, and fallow in my mind ever
since.  It was this.  Since thoughts are the accompaniments of
modifications of the cerebrial tissue, what thoughts must be concomitants
of its putrefaction?  It is certainly as ghastly an idea as any man could
wish for on a fine summer morning.  It thought I would use it to make
people's flesh creep.  My difficulty was how to acquaint other people with
the thoughts of a dead man.  So I made him a man of science and provided
him with a wife, a student at Newnham, endowed with extraordinary
sensibility which she develops into

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thought reading.  She and her husband make a series of experiments and thus
develop her faculty to perfection.  He gets Bright's disease and dies,
while she records what he thinks during delirium, coma and finally death.
     I managed to make the story sound fairly plausible and let myself go
magnificently in the matter of horror.  I read it aloud to a house party on
Christmas Eve; in the morning they all looked as if they had not recovered
from a long and dangerous illness.  I found myself extremely disliked!
     Encouraged by this, I decided to offer the story to the "English"
"Review"; but (for various reasons) sent it in as from another hand.  I got a
friend of mine to enclose it with a letter to say that it was the work of
her daughter at Cambridge.  (The story ends, by the way, with the widow,
unable to endure the horror of knowing what was in store for her and the
rest of humanity, urging everybody to blow out their brains with dynamite
as the most practical method of minimizing the agony.  She is then put in
an asylum, where she demonstrates the genuiness of her claim to report
accurately what people are thinking but fails to impress the English doctor
through implored by the most eminent German professor in that department of
science to allow her to work with him.)  The editor wrote to my friend that
he would like to publish the story, but required proof of its literal
truth.
     I cannot comment upon such incidents.  I have never been able to
understand the psychology of such crass stupidity as I have found almost
universal among editors and publishers.  I can understand any man
considering any piece of literature worthless, or thinking it a supreme
masterpiece.  Hume's remarks on the "unhappy barbarism" of Shakespeare, and
Shelley's delusion that Leigh Hunt was a poet, are perfectly intelligible
to me; but I am completely baffled by such mental operations as here
indicated.  Another instance will be found in connection with my story "The
Stratagem" on a subsequent page.
     A third symptom of the disease of the same individual is brought out
in my poem, "To A New Born Child".  The editor protested that it was rather
rough luck on a kid to predict such misfortunes for it.  In other words, he
had not the remotest idea what the poem was about.  Considering that this
particular editor is quite justly reputed to be far and away the best man
in England in the matter of appreciating first-class work, it is perfectly
incomprehensible to me that he should be such an arrant blockhead.
     Most of my time in 1912 was taken up by the O.T.O.  The Order was a
great success and ceremonies of initiation were of almost daily occurrence.
I was also very busy helping Laylah in her career.  The problem was not
easy.  I soon discovered that it was not in her to undergo the dreary
remorseless drudgery demanded by ambition to the classical concert
platform.  Striking too as her success had been in the Rites of Eleusis, it
soon became

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clear that its source was the impulse of my personality.  I could invoke
the gods into her; I could not teach her to invoke them herself.
     The truth of the matter was that her art was a secondary consideration
with her.  Secretly, she herself was probably unconscious of it.  She was
obsessed by the fear of poverty, the Oedipus-complex wish for a "secure
future", snobbish ambition to improve her social standing.  As soon as she
passed the age of thirty and came into contact with the atmosphere of
America, the spiritual and even the romantic sides of her character wasted
away.  She rushed desperately from one prospect of prosperity to another,
only to find herself despised and duped by the men she was trying to
deceive.  At last she dropped to the depth of despair and in her drowning
struggles lost her last link with life and love.  She became a traitor and
a thief; and bolted with her spoils to hide herself, like Fafnir, from the
very eye of heaven.
     I failed to divine the essential hopelessness of helping her.  I
idealized her; I robed her in the royal vestures of romance.  The power and
passion of her playing inspired me.  Her beauty, physical and moral,
bewitched me.  I failed to realize to what extent these qualities depend
upon circumstances; but it was clear by the beginning of 1912 that she
could never get much higher than leading the Ladies' Band in "The Waltz"
"Dream" as she had been doing.  The best hope was to find something equally
within her powers which would yet give her the opportunity to make an
individual impression.  I therefore suggested that she should combine
fiddling with dancing.  My idea was, of course, to find a new art form.
But of this she was not capable.  She failed to understand my idea.
     I acquiesced.  I turned my thoughts to making a popular success for
her.  We collected six assistant fiddlers, strung together a jumble of
jingles and set them to a riot of motion; dressed the septette in coloured
rags, called them "The Ragged Ragtime Girls" and took London by storm.  It
was a sickening business.
     Laylah had spent some weeks in New York with "Two Little Brides".  I had
given her introductions to various correspondents of mine in the city;
people interested in my work.  One of these demands attention, both for her
own sake as one of the most remarkable characters I have ever known and for
the influence of her intervention on my affairs.
     Her name was Vittoria Cremers.  She claimed to be the bastard of a
wealthy English Jew and to have married a knavish Austrian baron.  She was
an intimate friend of Mabel Collins, authoress of "The Blossom and the"
"Fruit", the novel which has left so deep a mark upon my early ideas about
Magick.  In 1912 she was in her fifties.  Her face was stern and square,
with terribly intense eyes from which glared an expression of indescribably
pain and hopeless horror.  Her hair was bobbed and dirty white, her dress
severely

{690}

masculine save the single concession of a short straight skirt.  Her figure
was sturdy and her gait determined though awkward.  Laylah found her in a
miserable room on 176th Street or thereabouts.  Pitifully poor, she had not
been able to buy "Liber 777" and had therefore worked week after week copying
in the Astor Library.  She impressed Laylah as an ernest seeker and a
practical business woman.  She professed the utmost devotion to me and
proposed to  come to England and put the work of the Order on a sound
basis.  I thought the idea was excellent, paid her passage to England and
established her as a manageress.
     Technically, I digress; but I cannot refrain from telling her
favourite story.  She boasted of her virginity and of the intimacy of her
relations with Mabel Collins, with whom she lived a long time.  Mabel had
however divided her favours with a very strange man whose career had been






extraordinary.  He had been an officer in a cavalry regiment, a doctor, and
I know not how many other things in his time.  He was now in desperate
poverty and depended entirely on Mabel Collins for his daily bread.  This
man claimed to be an advanced Magician, boasting of many mysterious powers
and even occasionally demonstrating the same.
     At this time London was agog with the exploits of Jack the Ripper.
One theory of the motive of the murderer was that he was performing an
Operation to obtain the Supreme Black Magical Power.  The seven women had
to be killed so that their seven bodies formed a "Calvary cross of seven
points" with its head to the west.  The theory was that after killing the
third or the fourth, I forget which, the murderer acquired the power of
invisibility, and this was confirmed by the fact that in one case a
policeman heard the shrieks of the dying woman and reached her before life
was extinct, yet she lay in a "cul-de-sac", with no possible exit save to the
street; and the policeman saw no signs of the assassin, thought he was
patrolling outside, expressly on the lookout.
     Miss Collins' friend took great interest in these murders.  He
discussed them with her and Cremers on several occasions.  He gave them
imitations of how the murderer might have accomplished his task without
arousing the suspicion of his victims until the last moment.  Cremers
objected that his escape must have been a risky matter, because of his
habit of devouring certain portions of the ladies before leaving them.
What about the blood on his collar and shirt?  The lecturer demonstrated
that any gentleman in evening dress had merely to turn up the collar of a
light overcoat to conceal any traces of his supper.
     Time passed!  Mabel tired of her friend, but did not dare to get rid
of him because he had a packet of compromising letters written by her.
Cremers offered to steal these from him.  In the man's bedroom was a tin
uniform case which he kept under the bed to which he attached it by cords.
Neither of the

{691}



































women had ever seen this open and Cremers suspected that he kept these
letters in it.  She got him out of the way for a day by a forged telegram,
entered the room, untied the cords and drew the box from under the bed.  To
her surprise it was very light, as if empty.  She proceeded nevertheless to
pick the lock and open it.  There were no letters; there was nothing in the
box, but seven white evening dress ties, all stiff and black with clotted
blood!
     Her other favourite story is more to the point.  At the critical
moment of her mission, Madame Blavatsky had been most foully betrayed by
Mabel Collins with the help, according to the stratagems and at the
instigation of Cremers, who not only justified, but boasted of her conduct.
     It may be matter for surprise that I was not warned of the woman's
character by this confession.  But I have one invariable rule in dealing
with those that come to me for training and that is: to pay no attention
whatever to their relations with myself, but to advise them according to
the principles of the A.'. A.'., as if we lived in different planets.
For instance, if a man tells me he is a thief, I refuse on principle to
lock up my spoons; I use the information solely as a key to his character,
and tell him that in robbing others he is really robbing himself by
violating the principle which protects him from theft.  I trusted Cremers
absolutely, though I knew this --- and even that she had, at one time, been
the paid spy of some blackmailing vigilance society in America, which,
under cover of moral indignation, forged false evidence against convenient
candidates, implicating them in the white slave traffic, extracting hush
money, or prosecuting when the victim was not worth despoiling or refused
to pay up, and sometimes by way of "making an example", in order to
frighten the next batch whose blood they proposed to suck.
     I left a book of signed cheques in her charge; I allowed her access to
my private papers.  I gave no sign that I saw how she was corrupting the
loyalty of Laylah and making mischief all round.  Presently, at the end of
1913, she got influenza.  I went to visit her unexpectedly; there, on the
table by her bed, was a memorandum showing unmistakably that she had
embezzled large sums of money by fraudulent manipulation of the aforesaid
cheques.  I failed to conceal from her that I had seen and understood, but
I continued to act towards her with unvarying kindness and continued to
trust her absolutely.  It was too much for her!  She had hated me from the
first, as she had hated Blavatsky, and vowed to ruin me as she had ruined
my great predecessor; and now, when she had robbed me and betrayed me at
every turn, I had not turned a hair.  The consciousness that her hate was
impotent was too much for her to endure.  She developed an attack of
meningitis and was violently insane for six weeks, at the end of which time
she melted away to hide her shame in Wales, where she supposed sensibly
enough that she would find

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sympathetic society in thieves and traitors after her own heart.  I
understand in fact that she is still there.
     During the whole period up to the outbreak of the war, my work
gradually increased and consolidated.  I must mention the visit of my
representative in South Africa, Frater Semper Paratus.  This brother
possessed the most remarkable magical faculties, within a certain limited
scope.  It was natural for him to bring into action those forces which
impinge directly upon the material world.  For instance, his ability to
perform divination by means of geomancy (which presumes the action of
intelligences of a gross type) has no parallel in my experience.  Let me
illustrate what I mean.
     By profession Frater Semper Paratus was a chartered accountant.  He
would be called in to audit the finances of some firm.  He would find
himself confronted by an overwhelming mass of documents.  "It means three
weeks' work," he would say to himself, "to discover the location of the
error."  Instead of exploring the mass of material at random, he would set
up a series of geomantic figures and, after less than a hour's work, would
take up the volume geomantically indicated and put his finger at once upon
the origin of the confusion.
     On another occasion, he bethought himself that, living as he did in
Johannesburg, surrounded by gold and diamonds, he might as well use
geomancy to discover a deposit for his own benefit.  Indifferent as to
whether he found gold or diamonds, he thought to include both by framing
his question to cover "mineral wealth".  He was directed to ride out from
the city by a given compass bearing.  He did so.  He found no indication of
what he sought.  He had given up hope and determined to return when he saw
a range of low hills before him.  He decided to push on and see if anything
was visible from their summit. No, the plain stretched away without
promise, a marshy flat with pools of stagnant water dotted about it.  At
his moment of complete disappointment, he noticed that his pony was
thirsty.  He therefore rode down to the nearest pool to let him drink.  The
animal refused the water, so he dismounted to find out the reason.  The
taste told him at once that he had discovered an immensely rich deposit of
alkali.  His geomancy had not misled him; he had found mineral wealth.  He
proceeded to exploit his discovery and would have become a millionaire in
short order had he not met with the opposition of Burnner, Mond & Co.
     On the other hand, his clairvoyance was hopelessly bad, so that he
could not pass the examination for the Grade of Zelator of A.'. A.'.
though in other points entitled to a much higher degree.  One of his
practical objects in visiting England was to ask me personally to get him
over the stile.
     I did so.  At the very first trial I enabled him to use his astral
eyesight.  Our joint work developed and we resolved to make a series of
investigations of "The Watch Towers of the Elements", beginning with that
of Fire.  The

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question arose: "Why does the instruction tell us to rise vertically in the
astral body for a great distance before penetrating the symbol under
examination?"  I said, "It seems to me a mere superstition connected with
the idea that heaven is above and hell beneath one."  To clear up this
point, we decided to enter the Watch Tower directly, without rising.  Our
visions, occupying three successive days, showed no abnormal features.  But
--- and here one cannot help feeling that Semper Paratus's faculty of
making connection with forces in close contact with the material plane is
involved --- no less than five fires broke out in the studio during that
period.  On the third night, Semper Paratus decided to walk home to the
house of the friends with whom he was staying in Hampstead.  It was late at
night when he approached; but his attention was at once attracted by smoke
issuing from the house.  He gave the alarm and the fire was quickly got
under.  The mysterious and significant point about the incident is that the
fire had got started in the one place  in a house where there is no
rational explanation for an outbreak --- in the coal cellar!
     One further illustration of the peculiar qualities of this Brother.  I
had advised him to evoke the forces of Fire and Air on return to South
Africa, they being naturally plentiful in that part of the world.  He began
with the fiery part of Fire, which includes lightning.  When he began his
ceremony there was no indication of electrical disturbance; but in a few
minutes a storm gathered and his temple was struck.
     Another Brother similarly evoking the forces of Water, the cistern of
his house burst during the ceremony and flooded it.
     Similar incidents constantly occur to those Magicians whose forces
tend to manifest in concrete expression.  But such men are rare.  In my own
case, though many similar phenomena have occurred, as already recorded, I
regard them as due to defects of insulation.  They warn me to take pains to
perfect my circle.
     The art of producing phenomena at will is a totally different
question.  The simplest, most rational, and most direct method had been
known to me since the summer of 1911; but for some reason, I had never
practised it systematically or recorded my results methodically.  I believe
this to have been due to an instinctive reluctance in respect of the nature
of the method.  It was not until January 1st, 1914 that I made it my
principal engine.








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                              72


     I think it proper to devote an entire chapter to the subject of my
relations with freemasonry.  I have mentioned that I had obtained the 33�
in Mexico City.  It did not add much of importance to my knowledge of the
mysteries; but I had heard that freemasonry was a universal brotherhood and
expected to be welcomed all over the world by all brethren.
     I was brought up with a considerable shock within the next few months,
when, chancing to discuss the subject with some broken-down gambler or
sporting-house tout --- I forget exactly --- I found that he would not
"recognize" me!  There was some trivial difference in one of the grips or
some other totally meaningless formality.  A measureless contempt for the
whole mummery curled my lip.  I squared the matter (as already related) by
having myself initiated in Lodge Number 343 "Anglo-Saxon" in Paris.  What
that led to I have recounted elsewhere and now quote:

     I happened to know that the chaplain of the British Embassy in Z---
     was Past Grand Organist of a certain English province.  He proposed
     me, found a seconder, and I was duly initiated, passed and raised.  I
     was warmly welcomed by numerous English and American visitors to our
     Lodge; for Z--- is a very great city.
     I returned to England sometime later, after "passing the chair" in my
     Lodge, and wishing to join the Royal Arch, called on its venerable
     Secretary.
     I presented my credentials.  "O Thou Great Architect of the Universe,"
     the old man sobbed out in rage, "why dost Thou not wither this
     impudent impostor with Thy fire from heaven?  Sir, begone!  You are
     not a Mason at all!  As all the world knows, the people in Z--- are
     atheists and live with other men's wives."

     I thought this a little hard on my Reverend Father in God, my
proposer; and I noted that, of course, every single English or American
visitor to our Lodge in Z--- stood in peril of instant and irrevocable
expulsion on detection.  So I said nothing, but walked to another room in
Freemasons' Hall over his head, and took my seat as a Past Master in one of
the oldest and most eminent Lodges in London!
     Kindly note, furthermore, that when each of those wicked visitors
returned to their Lodges after their crime, they automatically
excommunicated the

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whole thereof; and as visiting is very common, it may well be doubted
whether, on their own showing, there is a single "just, lawful and regular
mason" left on the earth!
     By the end of 1910, thanks to my relations with the Grand Hierophant
97� of the Rite of Memphis (a post held after his death by Dr. Gerard
Encausee, Theodor Reuss, and myself), I was now a sort of universal
inspector-general of the various rites, charged with the secret mission of
reporting on the possibility of reconstructing the entire edifice, which
was universally recognized by all its more intelligent members as being
threatened with the gravest danger.
     I must briefly explain the circumstances.
     (a) There is a great multiplicity of rites.
     (b) There is a great multiplicity of jurisdictions.
     (c) Even where rite and jurisdiction are identical, there are certain
national jealousies and other causes of divergence.
     (d) The Progress of feminism has threatened the Craft.  (The meaning
of the 3� having been totally lost, orthodox freemasons are unable to
explain why women cannot become Master Masons.  They cannot.  I, the
fiercest of feminists, say so.)  Co-Masonry, under Mrs Besant, whose
hysterical vanity compels her to claim any high-sounding title that she
happens to hear, "Le Droit Humain" in France, and similar movements almost
everywhere, were bringing masonry into contempt by their sheer silliness.
They were so obviously exactly as good as real freemasons.
     (e) The history of freemasonry has become more obscure as the light of
research has fallen on the subject.  The meaning of masonry has either been
completely forgotten or has never existed at all, except insofar as any
particular rite might be a cloak for political or even worse intrigue.
     (f) It has become impossible for people living in modern conditions to
devote adequate time even to learning the merest formalities.
     (g) The complete lack of understanding which is now practically
universal has made men inquire why in God's name they should cherish such
pretentious pedantries?
     A few anecdotes will illustrate the situation for the average non-
mason.
     1. A certain rite in England derives its authority from a document
which is as notoriously a forgery as Pigott ever penned.  The heads of this
gang wished to break, in the most shameless and rascally manner, an
agreement made some years previously with John Yarker.  Yarker pointed out
that their only real authority was derived from their agreement with him,
since he, working under a genuine charter, had "heled" their breach with
antiquity by recognizing them.  They replied that they relied on the forged
document.  He said that he would cut away the ground from under their feet
by publishing the proofs that their charter was worthless.  Then they said
that they

{696}




















knew as well as he did that the document was forged; but they didn't care,
because they had induced the Prince of Wales to join them!
     2. Several of the main rites of English masonry are not recognized by
each other, and some of these are not even tolerated (that is, if a member
of A joins B, or even discusses freemasonry with a member of B, he becomes
liable to immediate expulsion); yet a certain royal duke was actually the
head of two incompatible rites.
     3. There is no uniformity with regard to toleration.  Thus A and B
sometimes recognize each other, but, while A recognizes C, B does not, so
that a member of B and a member of C might find themselves meeting in a
Lodge of A, and thereby automatically excommunicate each other.
     4. English Craft masons do not permit religious political or
commercial motives to enter into freemasonry, yet they are in official
relationship with certain masonic bodies whose sole "raison d'�tre" is anti-
clericalism, political intrigue or mutual trade benefit.
     5. The Scottish Rite, the degrees of Knight Templar, Knight of Malta
and others in England are definitely Christian, e.g. the point of one
degree is the identification of prophet, priest and king, three in one, the
Trinity of the Royal Arch, with Christ; and in the Rose Croix degree,
Christ is recognized as the "corner stone" of earlier symbolism.  But in
America, the Christian elements have been removed so that wealthy Jews may
reach the summit of masonry.
     6. I once attended a Lodge whose Master was one of the two local
bankers.  He used his influence to get business for his bank.  The other
banker promptly obtained a charter from some "clandestine" body and started
an opposition.  In this district, the clandestine Lodges greatly
outnumbered the orthodox.
     7. I have visited Craft Lodges and Royal Arch Chapters in Fraternal
Accord in England, where the "raising" and "exaltation" were carried out in
shirt sleeves, while cigars were smoked and the legs conveniently disposed
on other chairs, and only employed to kick the candidate as he went round.
     8. At one ceremony in America, the officers being 33� masons,
recognized by the orthodox Scottish Rite in England, there were two
candidates, both Jews.  They were hoodwinked and introduced into opposite
ends of a tube through which they were instructed to make their way.  In
the middle of the tube was a live sow.
     9. In Detroit, a member of the 32� was threatened by certain 33�s with
expulsion unless he complied with their views as to his domestic life.  The
matter was one with which they had no right to meddle on any conceivable
theory of human relations.
     10. In some parts of America, financial and social pressure is put
upon

{697}






















people to "compel" them to take the 32�!  It is common to boycott men in
trade or business for refusing to give unfair advantages to their fellow
masons.
     11. A 33� mason, of many years' standing, holding high office in the
Supreme Grand Council, who had joined in order to obtain the traditional
secret knowledge, told me that he had never learnt anything from any of the
degrees.  The only peculiarity in this case is that he should have expected
anything of the sort --- or wanted it!
     12. With hardly an exception, the "secrets" of freemasonry are
strictly arbitrary.  Let me explain what I mean.  If I am given the
combination of a safe, I expect to be able to open it by the use of the
word.  If I can do so, it proves that that is the correct word.  The
secrets of freemasonry disclose no mysteries; they do not do what they
profess to do; they are meaningless conventions.
     13. With the rarest exceptions, freemasons make no attempt to keep
their obligations so far as the moral principles inculcated are concerned.
For instance, the Master Mason is sworn to respect the chastity of the
wife, sister and daughter of his Brother.  Those who do so probably respect
the chastity of any woman irrespective of her male connections.
     14. Freemasons, generally, but especially in England and America,
resent any attempt to take masonry seriously.  I may quote an essay by a
Past Grand Master.  It appeared in the "English Review" for August 1922.  It
sets forth the initiated view.  The question is: Why does a man become a
mason?

          We ought to cross off the pettier human motives first, love of
     vanity, of mystery, of display, of make-believe; but the average man
     in England becomes a mason for as serious a reason as he become a
     Church member or a theosophist; and the average man is usually most
     abominably disillusioned.
          He may join the Craft with some idea of fellowship, because it is
     a tradition in his family to do so, or because he hopes to find in the
     Secret of the Mysteries something which he does not find in any of the
     exoteric forms of religion.
          How is it that the same Order satisfies --- more or less ---
     aspirations so diverse?
          We are brought at last face to face with the fundamental problem
     of the masonic historian --- the origin of the whole business.
         Without any hesitation at all, one may confess that on this
     critical question nothing is certainly known.  It is true, indeed,
     that the Craft Lodges in England were originally Hanoverian clubs, as
     the Scottish Lodges were Jacobite clubs, and the Egyptian Lodges of
     Cagliostro revolutionary clubs.

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          But that no more explains the origin of freemasonry than the fact
     "many Spaniards are Roman Catholics" explains why the priest says and
     does certain things rather than others in the Mass.
          Now here is the tremendous question: we can admit all Mr Yarker's
     contentions, and more, as to the connection of masonic and
     quasimasonic rites with the old customs of initiating people into the
     trade guilds; but why should such a matter be hedged about with so
     severe a wardenship, and why should the Central Sacrament partake of
     so awful and so unearthly a character?
          As freemasonry has been "exposed" every few minutes for the last
     century or so, and as any layman can walk into a masonic shop and buy
     the complete Rituals for a few pence, the only omissions being of no
     importance to our present point, it would be imbecile to pretend that
     the nature of the ceremonies of Craft masonry is an any sense a
     "mystery".
          There is, therefore, no reason for refraining from the plain
     statement that, to anyone who understands the rudiments of symbolism,
     the Master's degree is identical with the Mass.  This is in fact the
     real reason for papal anathema; for freemasonry asserts that every man
     is himself the living, slain and re-arisen Christ in his own person.
          It is true that not one mason in ten thousand in England is aware
     of this fact; but he has only to remember his "raising" to realize the
     fundamental truth of the statement.
          Well may Catholic and freemason alike stand appalled at the
     stupendous blasphemy which is implied, as they ignorantly think, not
     knowing themselves of the stuff and substance of the Supreme Self,
     each for himself alike no less than Very God of Very God!
          But suppose that the sublimity of this conception is accepted,
     the identity admitted; what sudden overwhelming billow from the past
     blasts their beatitude?  What but the words with which Freud concludes
"     "Totem and Taboo": In the beginning was the deed!
          For the "sacrifice of the Innocent" celebrated alike in the Lode
     and in cathedral is this identical murder of the Master of the Fellow-
     Craftsmen, that is of the Father by his sons, when the ape system of
     the "Fatherhorde" was replaced by the tribal system which developed
     into the "military clan"!

     These statements are undeniable, yet it may be doubted whether there
are five hundred freemasons of all the rites put together who would assent
to them, or even refrain from objecting to them as bitterly as the average
man in Victorian times disliked being told of his kinship with the other
primates, and as his children and grandchildren are annoyed when science
demonstrates

{699}





















that their religions are survivals of savage superstitions and their dreams
determined by bestial instincts.
     15. The W.M. of an exclusive English Lodge told me that he had learnt
his part by saying it over to his wife in bed, justifying himself for this
apparent breach of his obligation by remarking, with a laugh, that the
secrets were lost and that therefore he could not betray them however much
he wanted to.
     Faced with these, and similar difficulties, I gladly accepted the task
laid upon me by the most intelligent freemasons of the world, united as
they were by their sincerity, understanding and good will, though divided
by sectarian squabbles about jurisdiction.
     My first object was to answer the question, "What is freemasonry?" I
collated the rituals and their secrets, much as I had done the religions of
the world, with their magical and mystical bases.  As in that case, I
decided to neglect what it too often actually was.  It would be absurd to
judge Protestantism by the political acts of Henry VIII.  In the same way,
I could not judge masonry by the fact that it had denounced the Concordat.
I proposed to define freemasonry as a system of communicating truth ---
religious, philosophical, magical and mystical; and indicating the proper
means of developing human faculty by means of a peculiar language whose
alphabet is the symbolism of ritual.  Universal brotherhood and the greater
moral principles, independent of personal, racial, climatic and other
prejudices, naturally formed a background which would assure individual
security and social stability for each and all.
     The question then arose, "What truths should be communicated and by
what means promulgated?  My first object was to eliminate from the hundreds
of rituals at my disposal all exoteric elements.  Many degrees contain
statements (usually inaccurate) of matters well known to modern schoolboys,
through they may have been important when the rituals were written.  I may
mention one degree in which the candidate is portentiously informed that
there are other religions in the world besides Christianity and that there
is some truth in all of them.  Their tenets are explained in many cases
with egregious error.  The description of Buddha as a god is typical.  I
saw no point in overloading the system with superfluous information.
     Another essential point was to reduce the unwieldly mass of material
to a compact and coherent system.  I thought that everything worth
preserving could and should be presented in not more than a dozen
ceremonies, and that it should be brought well within the capacity of any
officer to learn by heart his part during the leisure time at his disposal,
in a month at most.
     The eighteenth-century Rosicrucians, so-called in Austria, had already
endeavoured to unite various branches of Continental freemasonry and its
superstructures; in the nineteenth century, principally owing to the energy

{700}





















and ability of a wealthy iron master named Karl Kellner, a reconstruction
and consolidation of traditional truth had been attempted.  A body was
formed under the name O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) which purported to
achieve this result.  It purported to communicate the secrets, not only of
freemasonry (with the Rites of 3�, 7�, 33�, 90�, 97�, etc.,) but of the
Gnostic Catholic Church, the Martinists, the Sat Bhai, the Rosicrucians,
the Knights of the Holy Ghost and so on, in nine degrees, with a tenth of
an honorary character to distinguish the "Supreme and Holy King" of the
Order in each country where it was established.  Chief of these kings is
the O.H.O. (Outer Head of the Order, or Frater Superior), who is an
absolute autocrat.  This position was at this time occupied by Theodor
Reuss, the Supreme and Holy King of Germany, who resigned the office in
1922 in my favour.
     The O.H.O. put the rituals of this Order at my disposal.  I found them
of the utmost value as to the central secret, but otherwise very inferior.
They were dramatically worthless, but the prose was unequal, they lacked
philosophical unity, their information was incomplete and unsystematic.
Their general idea was, however, of the right kind; and I was able to take
them as a model.
     The main objects of the instruction were two.  It was firstly
necessary to explain the universe and the relations of human life
therewith.  Secondly, to instruct every man how best to adapt his life to
the cosmos and to develop his faculties to the utmost advantage.  I
accordingly constructed a series or rituals, Minerval, Man, Magician,
Master-Magician, Perfect Magician and Perfect Initiate, which should
illustrate the course of human life in its largest philosophical aspect.  I
begin by showing the object of the pure soul, "One, individual and
eternal", in determining to formulate itself consciously, or, as I may say,
to understand itself.
     It chooses to enter into relations with the solar system.  It
incarnates.  I explain the significance of birth and the conditions
established by the process.  I next show how it may best carry out its
object in the eucharist of life.  It partakes, so to speak, of its own
godhead in every action, but especially through the typical sacrament of
marriage, understood as the voluntary union of itself with each element of
its environment.  I then proceed to the climax of its career in death and
show how this sacrament both consecrates (or, rather, sets its seal upon)
the previous procedure and gives a meaning thereto, just as the auditing of
the account enables the merchant to see his year's transactions in
perspective.
     In the next ceremony I show how the individual, released by death from
the obsession of personality, resumes relations with the truth of the
universe.  Reality bursts upon him in a blaze of adorable light; he is able
to appreciate its splendour as he could not previously do, since his
incarnation has enabled him to establish particular relations between the
elements of eternity.

{701}


















     Finally, the cycle is closed by the reabsorption of all individuality
into infinity.  It ends in absolute annihilation which, as has been shown
elsewhere in this book, may in reality be regarded either as an exact
equivalent for all other terms soever, or (by postulating the category of
time) as forming the starting point for new adventure of the same kind.
     It will be clear from the above that the philosophical perfection of
this system of initiation leaves nothing to be desired.  We may write
Q.E.D.  The practical problem remains.  We have already decided to
incarnate, and our birth certificates are with our bankers.  We do not have
to worry about these matters, and we cannot alter them if we would; death,
and what follows death, are equally certain, and equally able to take care
of themselves.  Our sole preoccupation is how best to make use of our
lives.
     Now the O.T.O. is in possession of one supreme secret.  The whole of
its system at the time when I became an initiate of the Sanctuary of the
Gnosis (IX�) was directed towards communicating to its members, by
progressively plain hints, this all-important instruction.  I personally
believe that if this secret, which is a scientific secret, were perfectly
understood, as it is not even my me after more than twelve years' almost
constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human
imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice.
     By this I mean such things as this: that if it were desired to have an
element of atomic weight six times that of uranium that element could be
produced.  If it were desired to devise an instrument by which the furthest
stars or the electrons could be brought within the range of every one of
our senses, that instrument could be invented.  Or that, if we wished to
develop senses through which we could appreciate all those qualities of
matter which at present we observe indirectly by means of apparatus, the
necessary nervous structure would appear.  It make these remarks with
absolute confidence, for even the insignificant approaches that I have been
able to make towards the sanctuaries of this secret have shown me that the
relations between phenomena are infinitely more complex than the wildest
philosophers have ever imagined, and that the old proverb "Where there's a
will there's a way" needs no caveat.
     I cannot forebear to quote from Professor A. S. Eddington, Plumian
Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge:

          Here is a paradox beyond even the imagination of Dean Swift.
     Gulliver regarded the Lilliputians as a race of dwarfs; and the
     Lilliputians regarded Gulliver as a giant.  That is natural.  If the
     Lilliputians had appeared dwarfs to Gulliver, and Gulliver had
     appeared a dwarf to the Lilliputians --- but no! that is too absurd
     for fiction, and is an idea only to be found in the sober pages of
     science.

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     The injunctions of the sages, from Pythagoras, Zoroaster and Lao Tzu,
to the Cabbalistic Jew who wrote the Ritual of the Royal Arch, and the
sentimental snob who composed those of the Craft degrees, are either
directed to indicating the best conditions for applying this secret, or are
mere waste of words.  Realizing this, it was comparatively simple for me to
edit masonic ethics and esotericism.  I had simply to refer everything to
this single sublime standard.  I therefore answered the question "How
should a young man mend his way?"  in a series of rituals in which the
candidate is instructed in the value of discretion, loyalty, independence,
truthfulness, courage, self-control, indifference to circumstance,
impartiality, scepticism, and other virtues, and at the same time assisted
him to discover for himself the nature of this secret, the proper object of
its employment and the best means for insuring success in its use.  The
first of these degrees is the V�, in which the secret is presented in a
pageant; while he is also instructed in the essential elements of the
history of the world, considered from the standpoint of his present state
of evolution and in his proper relation to society in general with
reference to the same.
     The degree of Knight Hermetic Philosopher follows, in which his
intellectual and moral attitude is further defined.  In the VI�, his
position having been thus made precise, he is shown how to consecrate
himself to the particular Great Work which he came to earth in order to
perform.  In the VII�, which is tripartite, he is first taught the
principle of equilibrium as extended to all possible moral ideas; secondly,
to all possible intellectual ideas; and lastly, he is shown how, basing all
his actions on this impregnable rock of justice, he may so direct his life
as to undertake his Great Work with the fullest responsibility and in
absolute freedom from all possibility of interferences.
     In the VIII�, the secret is once more manifested to him, more clearly
than before; and he is instructed in how to train himself to use it by
certain preliminary practices involving acquaintance with some of those
subtler energies which have hitherto, for the most part, eluded the
observation and control of profane science.
     In the IX�, which is never conferred upon anyone who has not already
divined from previous indications the nature of the secret, it is explained
to him fully.  The conclusions of previous experiments are placed at his
service.  The idea is that each new initiate should continue the work of
his predecessor, so that eventually the inexhaustible resources of the
secret may be within the reach of the youngest initiate; for at present, we
are compelled to admit that the superstitious reverence which has
encompassed it in past ages, and the complexity of the conditions which
modify its use, place us in much the same position as the electricians of a
generation ago in respect of their science.  We are assured of the
immensity of the force at our disposal;

{703}




















we perceive the extent of the empire which it offers us, but we do not
thoroughly understand even our successes and are uncertain how to proceed
in order to generate the energy most efficiently or to apply it most
accurately to our purposes.
     The X�, as in the old system, is merely honorary, but recent
researches into the mysteries of the IX� have compelled me to add an XI�,
to illustrate a scientific idea which has been evolved by the results of
recent experiments.
     In the reconstituted O.T.O. there are therefore six degrees in which
is conveyed a comprehensive conception of the cosmos and our relation
therewith, and a similar number to deal with our duty to ourselves and our
fellows, the development of our own faculties of every order, and the
general advancement and advantage of mankind.
     Wherever freemasonry and allied systems contribute to these themes,
their information has been incorporated in such a way as not to infringe
the privileges, puerile as they often seem, which have been associated
hitherto with initiation.  Where they merely perpetuate trivialities,
superstitions and prejudices, they have been neglected.
     I claim for my system that it satisfies all possible requirements of
true freemasonry.  It offers a rational basis for universal brotherhood and
for universal religion.  It puts forward a scientific statement which is a
summary of all that is at present known about the universe by means of a
simple, yet sublime symbolism, artistically arranged.  It also enables each
man to discover for himself his personal destiny, indicates the moral and
intellectual qualities which he requires in order to fulfil it freely, and
finally puts in his hands an unimaginably powerful weapon which he may use
to develop in himself every faculty which he may need in his work.
     My original draft of these rituals has required modification in
numerous details as research made clearer, deeper and wider the truth which
they comprehended; and also, as experience showed, the possibilities of
misunderstanding on the one hand, and of improved presentation on the
other.  Great practical progress was made until the work was suspended by
the outbreak of the war in 1914.
     One of my original difficulties was to restore the existing rituals to
their perfection.  There were innumerable corruptions due to ignorance of
Hebrew and the like on the part of the unworthy successors of the founders.
To take a gross example.
     The word "Jeheshua", spelt in Hebrew in the 18� of the Scottish Rite,
was habitually spelt with a Resh instead of a Vau.  So brutal a blunder is
conclusive proof that the modern Sovereign Princes of Rose Croix attach no
meaning whatever to the name of Jesus --- which they profess to adore more
intelligently than the mob because it represents the descent of the Holy
Spirit into the midst of that tremendous name of God which only occurs in

{704}





















their ritual because of its power to annihilate the universe if pronounced
correctly1.
     The intelligence of the average mason may be gauged by the following
quotation from the R.A.M. degree.  The twentieth century! --- and such
stuff is solemnly offered as instruction to grown men!

          Some have doubted whether the Ark was capable of containing two
     of every sort of creature, with provisions necessary for their support
     for a whole year; for so long and more did Noah stop in that Ark.  But
     on a careful inquiry it has been found that only about one hundred
     different sorts of beasts, and not two hundred birds, are known, the
     greater part of them are of no bulk, and many exceedingly small, and
     it has been said all the creatures in the Ark would not take up the
     room of five hundred horses.  After four thousand years human
     ingenuity cannot now contrive any proportions better adapted than that
     of the Ark for the purpose it was intended for.  A Dutch merchant, two
     hundred years ago, built a ship answering in its respective dimensions
     to those of the Ark; its length being one hundred and twenty feet,
     breadth twenty feet, depth twelve feet; while building, this vessel
     was laughed at, but afterwards it was found that it held one third
     more and sailed better than any other merchant vessel of the time.
          Thus we have a collateral proof no way inconsiderable that the
     Spirit of God, from whom commeth all understanding, directed Noah in
     that manner.

     Again, the central secret of a Master Mason is in a Word which is
lost.  This fact has induced various and ingenious persons to invent
ceremonies in which it is found (in some more or less remarkable manner)
amid the acclamations of the assembled populace, and proclaimed in pomp to
the admiring multitude.  The only drawback is that these Words do not work.
It apparently never occurred to these ingenuous artisans to test it.  It is
useless to label a brick "This is the keystone of the Royal Arch", unless
the arch stands when it is put in place.
     Much of freemasonry is connected with the Hebrew Cabbala.  My
knowledge of this science enabled me to analyse the Secret Words of the
various degrees.  I soon found myself able to correct many of the
corruptions which had crept in, and there was no doubt that my conclusions
were not mere conjectures, since they made coherent good sense out of
disconnected nonsense.  (I am naturally unable to publish any of these
discoveries; but

{705}


        1   The ignorance of masons is quite boundless.  In the Red Cross
          of Rome and Constantine Degree, for example, we read, "Lord God
          of Sabbath".  No one knows the difference between HB:Taw HB:Bet HB:Shin 
          and HB:Taw HB:Aleph HB:Bet HB:Tzaddi !


















I am always ready to communicate them to inquiring Brothers.  When I have
done so, my arguments have been found cogent and convincing.)
     I supposed myself to have reached the summit of success when I
restored the Secret Word of the Royal Arch.  In this case, tradition had
preserved the Word almost intact.  It required only a trifling change to
reveal it in all its radiant royalty.  And yet my success only left me with
a sense of deeper annoyance at my complete failure to deal with the abject
anti-climax of the III� with its lamentable excuses for having made a fool
of the candidate, its pretentious promises and its pitiful performance.
     As I lay one night sleepless, in meditation, bitter and eager, upon
this mystery I was suddenly stabbed to the soul by a suggestion so simple,
yet so stupendous, that I was struck into shuddering silence for I know not
how long before I could bring myself to switch on the electric light and
snatch my notebook.  At the first trial the solution sprang like sunlight
in my spirit.  I remained all that night in an ecstasy of awe and
adoration.  I had discovered the lost Word!
     The obvious line of criticism is this: How can you be sure that the
Word which you have discovered is really the lost Word after all?
     This may be made clear by an illustration.  On the apron of the 18� I
find HB:Heh HB:Resh HB:Shin HB:Heh HB:Yod  in Hebrew characters.  I find that this word
means nothing; the context suggests that it may be an error for
HB:Heh HB:Vau HB:Shin HB:Heh HB:Yod , Yeheshuah or Jesus; but how do I know that this word
and not another has power to make man triumphant over matter, to harmonize
and sanctify the blind forces of the universe?  Thus: I know that
HB:Heh HB:Vau HB:Heh HB:Yod  represents the four elements; that 4 is a number
symbolizing limitation.  It is the square of 2, the only number which
cannot be formed harmoniously into a "Magic Square".  (Two represents the
Dyad, the original Error.)  I know also that the letter Shin represents a
triune essence, the fire of the Spirit, and in particular Ruach Elohim, the
Spirit of the Gods, because these two words have the numerical value of
300, which is also that of Shin itself.
     I thus interpret the word Yeheshuah as the descent of the Holy Spirit
into the balanced forces of matter, and the name Yeheshuah is therefore
that of a man made divine by the descent of the Holy Spirit into his heart,
exactly as the name George means a farmer.  This exegetical method is not a
modern invention.  When Jehovah selected a family to be the father of
Israel, he changed the name HB:Mem-final HB:Resh HB:Bet HB:Aleph  (243 = Abram) Father of
Elevation into HB:Mem-final HB:Heh HB:Resh HB:Bet HB:Aleph  (248 = Abraham) Father of a multitude;
and by way of compensation changed HB:Yod HB:Resh HB:Shin  (510=Sari) Nobility to
HB:Heh HB:Resh HB:Shin  (505=Sarah), Princess.  There are several other similar
stories in the Bible.  A change of name is considered to indicate a change
of nature.  Further, each name is not arbitrary; it is a definite
description of the nature of the object to which it is attached.  By a
similar process, I am certain of my results in the matter of the Lost Word,
for the Found Word

{706}



















fulfils the conditions of the situation; and furthermore, throws light on
the obscure symbolism of the entire ritual.
     I am thus in a position to do for the contending sects of freemasonry
what the Alexandrians did for those of paganism.  Unfortunately, the men
who asked me to undertake this task are either dead or too old to take
active measures and so far there is no one to replace them.  Worse, the
general coarsening of manners which always follows a great war has
embittered the rival jurisdictions and deprived freemasonry altogether of
those elements of high-minded enthusiasms with regard to the great problems
of society which still stirred even its most degenerate sections half a
century ago, when Hargrave Jennings, Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey,
Kenneth MacKenzie, John Yarker, Theodor Reuss, Wynn Westcott and others
were still seeking truth in its traditions and endeavouring to erect a
temple of Concord in which men of all creeds and races might worship in
amity.
     I attempted to make the appeal of the new system universal by
combining it with a practical system of fraternal intercourse and mutual
benefit.  I formulated a scheme of insurance against all the accidents of
life; the details are given in the Official Instructions and Essays
published in "The Equinox", vol. III, no. I; and to set the example I
transferred the whole of my property to trustees for the Order.  The
general idea is this; that every man should enjoy his possessions and the
full fruits of his labours exactly as he does under his original
individualistic system, but the pooling of such possessions by economy of
administration, etc., leaves a surplus which can be used for the general
purposes of the Order.  I wished to introduce the benefits of co-operation
without interfering with the individual absoluteness of the elements of the
combination.
     The plan promised excellently.  The working expenses of the Order were
almost negligibly small.  We were therefore able to allow members to borrow
in case of necessity up to the total amount of their fees and
subscriptions; to give them a month's holiday for less than a week would
have cost an outsider; to save them all medical, legal and similar
expenses; to solve the problem of rent, and so on.  We offered all the
fabled advantages of socialism without in any way interfering with
individual dignity and independence.
     I can hardly be blamed for the catastrophe which has temporarily
suspended the work.  During the war the Grand Treasurer became insane.  His
character changed completely.  He developed a form of persecution mania, in
which his oldest and best friends seemed to him to be conspiring against
him.  Abetted by a dishonest solicitor, he alienated the whole of the
property of the Order with extraordinary thoroughness.  He actually
destroyed a great part of the library; he falsified the figures; and after
opposing all sorts of delays to the demand for his account, he actually
made away with my

{707}



















very underclothing.  My only remaining resources were some twenty thousand
pounds' worth of books which he could not touch without paying the sum of
three hundred and fifty pounds or so, which was due to the people with whom
they were stored.  I paid this amount in 1921 and the warehousemen then
refused to hand over the books or to pay me the balance owing to me on
their own statement.  They trusted to be able to steal them, having heard
that I was unable to find the money necessary to sue them.
     I thus found myself after the war entirely penniless and without
clothes, except for some of my Highland costumes which had been sent for
repair to a tailor just before the outbreak of hostilities and had remained
safely in storage.  I do not regret these events, except that I grieve over
the calamity to my brother.  I believe it to have been part of the plan of
the gods that I should be compelled to face the world entirely without
other than moral resources.  Such is certainly a supreme test of the
essential strength of any economic proposal.
     The system has justified itself astonishingly even in these unheard-of
difficulties; I have been able to establish a branch of the Order with
entire leisure to work at high pressure at its own objects, without
internal friction or economic collapse, although the income is derived
exclusively from casual windfalls.  If we were able to carry out the full
principles of the system, we should already be so prosperous as to be able
to devote ourselves exclusively to extending the advantages of the scheme
to the world at large.
     With regard to the original purposes of the Order, there can be no
doubt that the reduction of the cumbersome mass of masonic and similar
matters to a simple intelligible and workable system enables people to
enjoy the full advantages of initiations which, in the old days, were too
multiple to be conferred even on those who devoted a disproportionate
amount of their lives to the subject.  The central secret of freemasonry
which was lost, and is found, is in daily use by initiates of our Order.
Scientific facts are accumulating rapidly; and it is certain that within a
short time we shall be able to dispose of a force more powerful than
electricity and capable of more extended application, with the same
certainly.  Our qualitative results are unquestionable.  The lack of
quantitative methods, which has for so many centuries prevented the
systematic application of our knowledge, will soon be supplied.
     I may say that the secret of the O.T.O., besides what has been
mentioned above, has proved to all intents and purposes the simplification
and concentration of the whole of my magical knowledge.  All my old methods
have been unified in this new method.  It does not exactly replace them,
but it interprets them.  It has also enabled me to construct a uniform type
of engine for accomplishing anything that I will.
     My association with freemasonry was therefore destined to be more

{708}





















fertile than almost any other study, and that in a way despite itself.  A
word should be pertinent with regard to the question of secrecy.  It has
become difficult for me to take this matter very seriously.  Knowing what
the secret actually is, I cannot attach much importance to artificial
mysteries.  It is true that some of the so-called secrets are significant,
but as a rule they are so only to those who already know what the secret
is.  Again, though the secret itself is of such tremendous import, and
though it is so simple that I could disclose it and the principal rules for
turning it to the best advantage in a short paragraph, I might do so
without doing much harm.  For it cannot be used indiscriminately.
     Much fun has been made of the alchemists for insisting that the Great
Work, an ostensibly chemical process, can only be performed by adepts who
fear and love God, and who practise chastity and numerous other virtues.
But there is more common sense in such statements than meets the eye.  A
drunken debauchee cannot perform delicate manipulations in chemistry or
physics; and the force with which the secret is concerned, while as
material as the Becquerel emanations, is subtler than any yet known.  To
play great golf or great billiards, to observe delicate reactions, or to
conduct recondite mathematical researches, demands more than physical
superiorities.  Even the theological requirements of alchemy had meaning in
those days.  An Elizabethan who was not "at peace with God" was likely to
be agitated and thereby unfitted for work demanding freedom from emotional
distraction.  I have found in practice that the secret of the O.T.O. cannot
be used unworthily.
     It is interesting in this connection to recall how it came into my
possession.  It had occurred to me to write a book, "The Book of Lies", which
is also falsely called "Breaks", the wanderings or falsifications of the one
thought of "Frater Perdurabo" which thought is itself untrue.
     Each of its ninety-three chapters was to expound some profound magical
dogma in an epigrammatic and sometimes humorous form.  The Cabbalistic
value of the number of each chapter was to determine its subject.  I wrote
one or more daily at lunch or dinner by the aid of the god Dionysus.  One
of these chapters bothered me.  I could not write it.  I invoked Dionysus
with peculiar fervour, but still without success.  I went off in
desperation to "change my luck", by doing something entirely contrary to my
inclinations.  In the midst of my disgust, the spirit came upon me and I
scribbled the chapter down by the light of a farthing dip.  When I read it
over, I was as discontented as before, but I stuck it into the book in a
sort of anger at myself as a deliberate act of spite towards my readers.
     Shortly after publication, the O.H.O. came to me.  (At that time I did
not realize that there was anything in the O.T.O. beyond a convenient
compendium of the more important truths of freemasonry.)  He said that

{709}






















since I was acquainted with the supreme secret of the Order, I must be
allowed the IX� and obligated in regard to it.  I protested that I knew no
such secret.  He said, "But you have printed it in the plainest language."
I said that I could not have done so because I did not know it.  He went to
the bookshelves and, taking out a copy of "The Book of Lies", pointed to a
passage in the despised chapter.  It instantly flashed upon me.  The entire
symbolism, not only of freemasonry but of many other traditions, blazed
upon my spiritual vision.  From that moment the O.T.O. assumed its proper
importance in my mind.  I understood that I held in my hands the key to the
future progress of humanity.  I applied myself at once to learn all that he
could teach me, finding to my extreme surprise that this was little enough.
He fully understood the importance of the matter and he was a man of
considerable scientific attainment in many respects; yet he had never made
a systematic study of the subject and had not even applied his knowledge to
his purposes, except in rare emergencies.  As soon as I was assured by
experience that the new force was in fact capable of accomplishing the
theoretically predictable results, I devoted practically the whole of my
spare time to a course of experiments.
     I may conclude this chapter with the general remark that I believe
that my proposals for reconstituting freemasonry on the lines above laid
down should prove critically important.  Civilization is crumbling under
our eyes and I believe that the best chance of saving what little is worth
saving, and rebuilding the Temple of the Holy Ghost on plans, and with
material and workmanship, which shall be free from the errors of the
former, lies with the O.T.O.


















{710}
























                              73


     In the early part of 1913, my work had apparently settled down to a
regular routine.  Everything went very well but nothing startling occurred.
On March 3rd, the "Ragged Ragtime Girls" opened at the Old Tivoli.  It was
an immediate success and relieved my mind of all preoccupations with
worldly affairs.  Most of my time was devoted to developing the work of the
O.T.O.  In May I took a short holiday in France and the Channel Islands.
Only one incident is worthy of record.  I had gone down to my beloved
Forest of Fontainebleau for a walk.  One morning, climbing the Rocher
d'Avon, I saw a serpent cross my path.  A little higher the same thing
happened.  This time I was impelled to kill the reptile, which I did.
     I took it into my head that the Masters had sent this as a warning
that treachery was at work in London.  I returned and found that Cremers
was intriguing against me; and that, in particular, she had corrupted the
heart of Leila Waddell.  The O.H.O., moreover, had found out that the Grand
Hierophant of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, John Yarker, had
died some months earlier and that his death had been concealed from his
colleagues by the machinations of a sort of man named Wedgwood, in the
interest of Annie Besant who wanted to obtain control of the Rite.  The
outrage was baroque, it being the first condition of membership that the
candidate should be a freemason in good standing under the jurisdiction of
the Grand Lodge of England.  However the conspirators had illegally
convened a secret council at Manchester to elect a successor to Yarker.  I
was deputed to attend and convey the protests of the various Grand Masters
on the continent.  I did so.  I challenged the legality of the council.  I
showed that Wedgwood was not a freemason at all.  I exposed the whole
intrigue.  At the conclusion of my speech (printed in "The Equinox", vol. I,
No. x) the meeting was adjourned "sine die".  A council was then legally
convened; and a man designated by Yarker himself as his successor in one of
his last letters to me was elected Grand Master for Britain, with myself as
his principal officer.  Yarker's office as Grand Hierophant was filled by
Dr. Encausse (Papus), the Grand Master of France.
     Having accomplished these duties, I was free to accompany the "Ragged
Ragtime Girls" to Moscow, where they were engaged for the summer, at the
Aquarium.  They were badly in need of protection.  Leila Waddell was the
only one with a head on her shoulders.  Of the other six, three were
dipsomanics, four nymphomaniacs, two hysterically prudish, and all

{711}























ineradicably convinced that outside England everyone was a robber, ravisher
and assassin.  They all carried revolvers, which they did not know how to
use; though prepared to do so on the first person who spoke to them.
     At the Russian frontier, we plunged from civilization and order,
headlong into confusion and anarchy.  No one on the train could speak a
word even of German.  We were thrown out at Warsaw into a desolation which
could hardly have been exceeded had we dropped on the moon.  At last we
found a loafer who spoke a little German, but no man knew or cared about
the trains to Moscow.  We ultimately drove to another station.  A train was
due to leave, but they would not find us accommodation.  We drove once more
across the incoherent city and this time found room in a train which hoped
to go to Moscow at the average rate of some ten miles an hour.  The
compartment contained shelves covered with loose dirty straw on which the
passengers indiscriminately drank, gambled, quarrelled and made love.
There was no discipline, no order, no convenience.  At first I blamed
myself, my ignorance of the language and so on, for the muddle in Warsaw;
but the British counsul told me that he had himself been held up there by
railway mismanagement on one occasion for forty-eight hours.  When we
reached Moscow there was no one at the station who could take charge of our
part.  We found an hotel for ourselves, and rooms for the girls, more by
good luck than design.  About one in the morning they sent for Leila to
rescue them.  She found them standing on rickety tables, screaming with
fear.  The had been attacked by bed-bugs.  Luckily I had warned Leila that
in Russia the bug is as inseparable from the bed as the snail from his
shell.
     In a day or two things calmed down.  Then there came suddenly upon me
a period of stupendous spiritual impulse --- even more concentrated than
that of 1911.  In a caf�, I met a young Hungarian girl named Anny Ringler;
tall, tense, lean as a starving leopardess, with wild insatiable eyes and a
long straight thin mouth, a scarlet scar which seemed to ache with the
anguish of hunger for some satisfaction beyond earth's power to supply.  We
came together with irresistible magnetism.  We could not converse in human
language.  I had forgotten nearly all my Russian; and her German was
confined to a few broken cries.  But we had not need of speech.  The love
between us was ineffably intense.  It still inflames my inmost spirit.  She
had passed beyond the region where pleasure had meaning for her.  She could
only feel through pain, and my own means of making her happy was to inflict
physical cruelties as she directed.  This kind of relation was altogether
new to me; and it was perhaps because of this, intensified as it was by the
environment of the self-torturing soul of Russia, that I became inspired to
create for the next six weeks.
     How stupid it is, by the way, that one is obliged to use words in
senses inappropriate to, and sometimes incompatible with, the meaning which

{712}





















one wishes to convey!  Thus the idea of cruelty is bound up with that of
the unwillingness of the patient, so that in the case of masochism the use
of the word is ridiculous.  We fail to see straight on such points whenever
they concern emotional complexes like love.  Love, that is, as the wrong-
headed Anglo-Saxon defines it.  We do not call it cruel to offer a man a
cigar, though a small boy may suffer intensely from smoking one.  An
enormous amount of erroneous thinking springs from the mental laziness
which allows us to acquiesce in a standardized relation between two things
which is, in fact, dependent upon occasional conditions.
     This constantly leads to the grossest injustice and stupidity.  Words
like "miscreant", "atheist" and similar terms of abuse in matters which
excite the emotions of the vulgar, are constantly applied as labels to
people whom they nowise fit.  For instance, Huxley was branded as a
materialist, Thomas Paine as an atheist, when they were nothing of the
sort.  It was particularly annoying during the war to observe the
indiscriminate plastering of people with such mud as "pro-German",
"pacifist", "Bolshevist", etc., without the slightest reference to their
actual opinions.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating; my relations
with Anny must be judged by their fruits; happiness, inspiration,
spirituality and romantic idealism.
     I saw Anny almost every day for an hour or so.  The rest of my time I
spent (for the most part) in the gardens of the Hermitage or the Aquarium,
writing for dear life.  In Moscow, in the summer months, day fades into
night, night brightens into day with imperceptible subtlety.  There is a
spiritual clarity in the air itself which is indescribable.  From time to
time the bells reinforce the silence with an unearthly music which never
jars or tires.  The hours stream by so intoxicatingly that the idea of time
itself disappears from consciousness.
     In all that I wrote in those six weeks, I doubt if there is a single
word of Anny.  She was the soul of my expression, and so beyond the
possibility of speech; but she lifted me to heights of ecstasy that I had
never before consciously attained and revealed to me secrets deeper than I
ever deemed.  I wrote things that I knew not and made no mistake.  My work
was infinitely varied, yet uniformly distinguished.  I expressed the soul
of Moscow in a poem "The City of God", published some months afterwards in
the "English Review".  It is a "hashish dream come true".  Every object of
sense, from the desolation of the steppes and the sheer architecture of the
city, to the art, attitude and amusements of the people, stings one to the
soul, each an essential element of a supreme sacrament.  At the same time,
the reality of all these things, using the word in its grossest sense,
consummates the marriage of the original antinomies which exist in one's
mind between the ideal and the actual.
     A prose pendant to this poem is my essay "The Heart of Holy Russia",

{713}





















which many Russians competent to judge have assured me struck surer to the
soul of Russia than anything of Dostoyevsky.  Their witness fills me with
more satisfaction as to the worth of my work than anything else has ever
done.
     Another poem, "Morphia", has no ostensible reference to Russia, but
the insight into the psychology of the "addict" was indubitably conferred
by my illumination.  I had no experience, even at second hand, of the
effects of the drug; yet I was assured by a distinguished man of letters
who had himself suffered from its malice, that I have expressed to the
utmost the terrific truth.  He could hardly believe at first that I had
written it without actual knowledge.
     During this period the full interpretation of the central mystery of
freemasonry became clear in consciousness, and I expressed it in dramatic
form in "the Ship".  The lyrical climax is in some respects my supreme
achievement in invocation; in fact, the chorus beginning:

               Thou who art I beyond all I am ...

seemed to me worthy to be introduced as the anthem into the Ritual of the
Gnostic Catholic Church which, later in the year, I prepared for the use of
the O.T.O., the central ceremony of its public and private celebration,
corresponding to the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church.
     While dealing with this subject I may as well outline its scope
completely.  Human nature demands (in the case of most people) the
satisfaction of the religious instinct, and, to very many, this may best be
done by ceremonial means.  I wished therefore to construct a ritual through
which people might enter into ecstasy as they have always done under the
influence of appropriate ritual.  In recent years, there has been an
increasing failure to attain this object, because the established cults
shock their intellectual convictions and outrage their common sense.  Thus
their minds criticize their enthusiasm; they are unable to consummate the
union of their individual souls with the universal soul as a bridegroom
would be to consummate his marriage if his love were constantly reminded
that its assumptions were intellectually absurd.
     I resolved that my ritual should celebrate the sublimity of the
operation of universal forces without introducing disputable metaphysical
theories.  I would neither make nor imply any statement about nature which
would not be endorsed by the most materialistic man of science.  On the
surface this may sound difficult; but in practice I found it perfectly
simple to combine the most rigidly rational conceptions of phenomena with
the most exalted and enthusiastic celebration of their sublimity.  (This
ritual has been published in "The International", New York, March 1918, and
in "The Equinox", vol. IIK, No. i.)

{714}





















     Numerous other poems, essays and short stories were written during
this summer.  In particular there is a sort of novel, "The Lost Continent",
purporting to give an account of the civilization of Atlantis.  I sometimes
feel that this lacks artistic unity.  At times it is a fantastic rhapsody
describing my ideals of Utopian society; but some passages are a satire on
the conditions of our existing civilization, while others convey hints of
certain profound magical secrets, or anticipations of discoveries in
science.
     From my brief description of the conditions of travel in Russia, the
intelligent should be able to deduce what I thought of the immediate
political future of the country.  I returned to England with the settled
conviction that in the event of a serious war (the scrap with Japan was
really an affair of outposts, like our own Boer War) the ataxic giant would
collapse within a few months.  England's traditional fear of Slav
aggression seemed to me ridiculous; and France's faith in her ally,
pathetic.  The event has more than justified my vision.  I have no detailed
knowledge of politics;, but, just as my essay, "The Heart of Holy Russia",
told the inmost truth without even superficial knowledge of the facts which
were its symptoms, so I possess an immediate intuition of the of the state
of a country without cognizance of the statistics.  I am thus in the
position of Cassandra, foreseeing and foretelling fate, while utterly
unable to compel conviction.
     I cannot leave the subject of Russia without rescuing from oblivion
some of the significant stories which I had from the excellent British
consul, Mr. Groves.  The most deliciously fantastic is that of what I may
call the phantom battleship.  This vessel cost well over two million
sterling.  She was to be the last word in naval construction.  She was
launched at Odessa in the presence of a great gathering of notables, and
the scene lavishly photographed and described in the newspapers.  Alas!
upon her maiden cruise she was "spurlos versenkt".  The fact of the matter
was that she had never existed!  Her cost had gone straight into the
pockets of the various officials, the photographs were simply faked, and
the descriptions imaginary.
     Here is another ray of searchlight on Russian rottenness.  A crisis
had arisen between England and France.  A strong Chauvinist element was
urging the government to hurl a flat defiance at St James'.  The Minister
of Marine was asked to report on the readiness of the French navy.  He
replied in terms of absolute confidence; but within an hour of his doing
so, one of his officers came to him in agitation and begged him to make a
personal inspection of the arsenal at Toulon.  He rushed south on an
express engine and found that the fortress was absolutely denuded of
munitions.  They had been quietly sold off by a gang of dishonest officials
and the reports systematically falsified.
     On this discovery, he advised the President to agree with England
quickly while he was in the way with her, which was done.  The Russian
ambassador

{715}


















got wind of this affair; it suddenly struck him that Sebastopol might be in
the same street as Toulon; he hurried to St Petersburg and put the matter
personally before the Tsar.  Investigation proved his fears well-founded.
The Tsar was roused to bite.  Every officer above a certain rank was left
in a room with a revolver.  They had the choice between suicide and
shameful execution.  Naturally, they all chose the former and the whole
affair was hushed up by reporting their decease from sickness, accident and
so on during the next few weeks.
     At Vladivostok corruption was so universal and open that on pay day an
agent of the contractor sat at the next desk to the naval paymaster and
handed each man his share of the profits of the organized system of
swindling the government.
     One last luminous anecdote.  The representative of a Birmingham
munition factory called on our consul about some permit or other, and told
him the following story.  The Russian naval agent in England had accepted
the tender of his firm for supplying an immense number of shells.  "About
the price, now," he said to the managing director, "of course we pay you a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds" (or whatever it was) "but understand
that so much of this must go to Admiral A., so much to Councillor B., so
much to the Grand Duke C." --- a long list followed.  "My dear sir," cried
the Englishman, aghast, "surely I have made it plain that our price is bed
rock.  We shan't take a penny of profit.  We only put in so low a tender
because trade is so bad and we don't want to shut down."  The Russian
spread his hands mournfully.  "Why, hang it," exclaimed the manufacturer.
"If we were to allow you all those rake-offs, we should have to make the
shells of tinfoil and load them with sawdust."  The Russian brightened
instantly.  "But exactly," said he; "how I admire you practical English!  I
knew you would find a way out."  And that was how they settled the
business, and those were the shells with which Rodjiestvenski was sent
round the world to meet the navy of Japan.
     Our own red tape was responsible for a really Gilbertian stupidity in
consular matters.  It had been decided to raise Moscow from a consulate to
a consulate-general.  Mr Groves had been for many years in Moscow and spoke
practically no Polish.  Our consul at Warsaw had been in that city also for
many years and spoke practically no Russian.  But he was senior in the
service to Groves by a year or so.  It was therefore impossible to continue
Groves at Moscow over the head of the man in Warsaw, and they were
therefore ordered to change their position, each being ejected from the
city whose language he spoke, and whose affairs he had by heart, into one
where the conditions were utterly unfamiliar and the language
unintelligible.
     From early boyhood my imagination had been excited by accounts of the
Great Fair at Nijni Novgorod.  Finding "the time and the place and the

{716}





















loved one all together", at the cost of a slight effort, I decided to trot
off and see "The Fun of the Fair", by which title I called the poem in
which I describe my excursion.  The way in which I wrote it is, I imagine,
unique in literature.  I wrote down in heroic couplets every incident of
the adventure exactly as it occurred and when it occurred.  The only
variation is that occasionally I permit myself to exaggerate the facts (as
in enumerating the races of men whom I met) when the spirit of humour takes
charge.
     This poem should have appeared in the "English Review" in the autumn of
1914.  It was pushed out to make way for my "Appeal to the American
Republic", reprinted from boyhood's happy days, with such politically
necessary revisions as "the traitor Prussian" instead of "the traitor
Russian".   It has thus never yet seen the light.


























{717}




























                              74


     As I was sitting at lunch one day in the Hermitage beginning a lyrical
ritual intended for the use of an individual in his private work, I found
myself, in the middle of a sentence, at a loss for the next word.  I have
already explained how swiftly and spontaneously my spirit soars from stanza
to stanza without need of previous reflection or subsequent revision.  In
all these weeks my pen had swung like a skater over the paper.  Now
suddenly it stopped; an eagle in full flight stricken by a shaft.  That
sentence has never been completed.  The inspiration was withdrawn from me.
My light had gone out like an arc-light when the cable is cut.  It was long
before I wrote again.
     Three days later, the contract at the Aquarium was due to expire; and
those days proved to me how perfectly my existence depended on inspiration.
The city, from a crashing chorus of magical music, a pageant of passionate
pleasure, became a cold chaos of inanity.  The bells no longer sang; the
sun and moon were stagnant, soulless spectres in a senseless sky --- like a
ghost on the gusts of the gale.  I went from miraculous Moscow into a world
of inarticulate impressions.  St Petersburg failed to rekindle the wonder
and worship which it had awakened in me of old.  The Nevski Prospekt seemed
narrower, meaner; a mere street.  St Isaacs no longer enthralled me.  I was
able to compare the Neva with the Nile, the Ganges, the Rangoon River, and
even the Rhine, as coldly and critically as Baedeker.  My spirit need
infinite repose after its incomparable effort, and this repose was granted
to it by the voyage to Stockholm.
     There are ways amid the Western Isles of Scotland, through the
Norwegian fjords, and sometimes upon tropic seas, which speak to the soul
in a language unknown to any other scenes.  There is a solemnity and a
serenity in their continual silence which seem not of this world.  But the
summer voyage across the Baltic, amid the archipelago is sovereign above
any of these.  There is no single ripple on the sea, no stirring in the
air; the night is indistinguishable from the day, for neither suffers
interruption; the steamer skins the surface of the sea as swift and silent
as a swallow.  One cannot even hear the engines, so utterly does their
rhythm interpenetrate the totality of experience.  There is a sense of
floating in fairyland.  One forgets the land whence one has come; one has
no vision of the coast to which one is speeding.  It seems impossible that
the journey even began, still less, that its end is appointed.
     One seems to flit between innumerable islands, some crowned with
foliage,

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some mere bare gray knolls, scarce peeping from the waveless mirror of
water.  There is a sense of infinite intricacy of intention as the steamer
insinuates itself into one curving channel after another, or comes out
suddenly from a labyrinth of lyrical islands into a shoreless silence.
One's mind is utterly cut off, not only from terrestrial thoughts, but from
all definite ideas soever.  It is impossible to accept what we commonly
call actuality as having any real existence.  One neither sleeps nor wakes
from the moment when Kronstadt fades to a pale purple phantom of the past
till Stockholm springs from the sea, as if the Lethean languor of a
dreamless death, a mere deliciously indefinite serenity, were being gently
awakened to understand that its unguessed goal was at last in sight.  The
negative ecstasy of perfect release from the pressure of existence
developed into its positive equivalent when the soul, soothed and made
strong, by its swoon into stainless silence, was ready to spring, sublimely
self-sufficient, to the summit of its starry stature, to grasp and grapple
with the manifested majesty of the Most High ...
     In vain have I striven to compel language to convey the meaning of
that miraculous voyage.  It stands aloof, so pure and perfect in itself
that naught can blur its beauty.  It remains in my memory uncontaminated by
the sordid stupidity of Stockholm, the tedium of the discomfortable
dreariness of the return to London.
     I found my work precisely where I had left it.  The tenth and last
number of "The Equinox" was published in due course.  There was a certain
pride in having triumphed over such opposition, in having "carried on"
despite neglect, misunderstanding and treachery; in having achieved so many
formidable tasks.  There was also infinite satisfaction in so many signal
successes.  I could not doubt that I had made the Path of Initiation plain.
It was beyond doubt that any man of ordinary energy, integrity and
intelligence might now attain in a very few months what, until now, had
meant years of desperate devotion.  I had destroyed the superstition that
spiritual success depended on dogma.  I was thus able, to some extent, to
go fearlessly into the presence of the Secret Chiefs who had chosen me to
carry out their plans for the welfare of mankind, and say with upright head
that I had not wholly proved unworthy of their trust.  Yet withal, there
was a certain sadness such as, I suppose, every man feels when he comes to
the end of a definite stage in his career.  Nevertheless, I knew that those
who had thus far used me would not now throw me aside; that higher and
holier service would be found for me.
     During the autumn and until the solstice I went on with my regular
work as usual, but with a subconscious awareness that my future lay in
other fields; something was sure to happen to change the whole current of
my life.  Subtly enough, this change came about by diverting me from the
public

{719}





















action to which I had so long been bound by the sheer necessity of
producing "The Equinox" on definite dates.  I began to pay more attention to
my own personal progress.
     It must here be explained that my innate diffidence forbad me to
aspire to the Grade of Magus in any full sense.  Such beings appear only in
every two thousand years or so.  I knew too well my own limitations.  It is
true that I had been used as a Magus in the Cairo working; that is, I had
been chosen to utter the Word of a New Aeon.  But I did not regard this as
being "my" Word.  I felt myself ridiculously unworthy of the position
assigned to me in "The Book of the Law" itself.  When therefore I proposed to
devote myself to my own initiations, I meant no more than this: that I
would try to perfect myself in the understanding and powers proper to a
Master of the Temple.  At the end of 1913, I found myself in Paris with a
Zelator of the Order, Frater L. T.  I had been working on the theory of the
magical method of the O.T.O.; and we decided to test my conclusions by a
series of invocations.
     We began work on the first day of the year and continued without
interruption for six weeks.  We invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter; and
obtained many astonishing results of many kinds, ranging from spiritual
illumination to physical phenomena.  It is impossible to transcribe the
entire record, and to give excerpts would only convey a most imperfect and
misleading idea of the result.  As an example of actual intellectual
illumination, however, I may quote the very impressive identification of
the Christ of the gospels with Mercury.  This came as a complete surprise,
we having till then considered him as an entirely solar symbol connected
especially with Dionysus, Mithras and Osiris.

          In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, who is Mercury, and is
     therefore to be identified with Christ.  Both are messengers; their
     birth mysteries are similar; the pranks of their childhood are
     similar.  In the Vision of the Universal Mercury, Hermes is seen
     descending upon the sea, which refers to Maria.  The Crucifixion
     represents the caduceus; the two thieves, the two serpents; the cliff
     in the Vision of the Universal Mercury is Golgotha; Maria is simply
     Maia with the solar R in her womb.
          The controversy about Christ between the synoptics and John was
     really a contention between the priests of Bacchus, Sol and Osiris,
     also, perhaps, of Adonis and Attis, on the one hand, and those of
     Hermes on the other, at that period when initiation all over the world
     found it necessary, owing to the growth of the Roman empire, and the
     opening up of means of communication, to replace conflicting
     polytheisms by a synthetic faith.  (This is absolutely new to me, this
     conception

{720}





















     of Christ as Mercury.)  Some difficulty about the ... (This sentence
     is now quite unintelligible.)
          To continue the identification, compare Christ's descent into
     hell with the function of Hermes as guide of the dead.  Also Hermes
     leading up Eurydice, and Christ raising up Jairus' daughter.  Christ
     is said to have risen on the third day, because it takes three days
     for the planet Mercury to become visible after separating from the orb
     of the sun.  (It may be noted here that Mercury and Venus are the
     planets between us and the sun, as if the Mother and the Son were
     mediators between us and the Father.)
          Note Christ as the Healer, and also his own expression, "The son
     of Man cometh as a thief in the night"; and also this scripture (Matt.
     XXIV, 27), "For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth
     even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be."
          Note also Christ's relations with the money changers, his
     frequent parables, and the fact that his first disciple was a
     publican.
          Note also Mercury as the deliverer of Prometheus.
          One half of the fish symbol is also common to Christ as Mercury;
     fish are sacred to Mercury (owing presumably to their quality of
     movement).  (This I did not know before.)  Many of Christ's disciples
     were fishermen and he was always doing miracles in connexion with
     fish.
          Note also Christ as the mediator: "No man cometh unto the Father
     but by Me", and Mercury as Chokmah through whom alone we can approach
     Kether.
          The caduceus contains a complete symbol of the Gnosis; the winged
     sun or phallus represents the joy of life on all planes from the
     lowest to the highest.  The Serpents, besides being active and
     passive, Horus and Osiris, and all their other well-known attributions
     are those qualities of Eagle and Lion respectively, of which we know
     but do not speak.  It is the symbol which unites the Microcosm and the
     Macrocosm, the symbol of the Magical Operation which accomplishes
     this.  The caduceus is the universal solvent.  It is quite easy to
     turn quicksilver into gold on the physical plane, and this will soon
     be done.  New life will flow through the world in consequence.  The
     god now lays his caduceus upon my lips for silence; bidding me only
     remember that on the following night he is to come in another form.
          The temple was then closed.

     Our occasional failures produced results as striking and instructive
as our successes.  For instance, having made an error in invoking Mercury,
and thus having created a current of force contrary to his nature, we
observed that events of a Mercurial character, no matter how normal, failed
to occur.  For

{721}



















one thing, all communications with the outer world were completely cut off
for sometime.  It had been arranged that I should receive a daily report
from London from my secretary.  None arrived for five days; and that
although nothing had gone wrong in London.  No explanation was ever
forthcoming.  This is one of the many incidents tending to similar
conclusions, all explicable only on the theory that the natural energy,
which is normally present and is necessary to the occurrence of certain
types of event, had somehow been inhibited.
     The Jupiterian phenomena were especially remarkable.  We performed in
all sixteen operations to invoke this force.  It seemed at first as if our
work actually increased the normal inertia.  Jupiterian phenomena which we
had every right to expect simply failed to happen.  Even in the matter of
banqueting, which we were supposed to do lavishly in his honour, the
opposition became overwhelming.  Hungry as we might be, we seemed unable to
force ourselves to eat even a light meal.  Quite suddenly the invisible
barrier broke down and Jupiterian phonemena of the most unexpected kind
simply rained on us.  To mention one incident only; a Brother who had
always been desperately poor suddenly came into a fortune and insisted on
contributing five hundred pounds to the use of the Order.
     I must mention one incident of the Paris working as being of general
interest, outside technical Magick.  During the operation I had a bad
attack of influenza, which settled down to very severe bronchitis.  I was
visited one evening by an old friend of mine and her young man, who very
kindly and sensibly suggested that I should find relief if I smoked a few
pipes of opium.  They accordingly brought the apparatus from their
apartment and we began.  (Opium, by the way, is sacred to Jupiter, and to
Chesed, Mercy, as being sovereign against pain, and also as enabling the
soul to free itself from its gross integument and realize its majesty.)  My
bronchitis vanished; I went off to sleep; my guests retiring without waking
me.  In my sleep I dreamt; and when I woke the dream remained absolutely
perfect in my consciousness, down to the minutest details.  It was a story,
a subtle exposure of English stupidity, set in a frame of the craziest and
most fantastically gorgeous workmanship.  Ill as I was, I jumped out of bed
and wrote down the story offhand.  I called it "The Strategem".  No doubt
it was inspired by Jupiter, for it was the first short story that I had
ever written which was accepted at once.  More: I was told --- nothing in
my life ever made me prouder --- that Joseph Conrad said it was the best
short story he had read in ten years.
     We ourselves became identified with Jupiter, but in different aspects.
Frater L. T. was for some months following the personification of
generosity, through himself with the most meagre resources.  All sorts of
strangers planted themselves on him and he entertained them.  In my own
case, I became that type of Jupiter which we connect with the idea of
prosperity,

{722}




















authority and amativeness.  I received numerous occult dignities; I seemed
to have plenty of money without quite knowing how it happened; and I found
myself exercising an almost uncanny attraction upon every woman that came
into my circle of acquaintance.
     To me, however, as a student of nature, the one important result of
this work was the proof of the efficacy of the magical method employed.
Henceforth, I made it my principal study, kept a detailed record of my
researches, and began to discover the rational explanation of its operation
and the conditions of success.
     More important yet, in the deepest sense, was a feature of the result
which I failed to observe at the time, and even for some years after.  In
veiled language are hints, unmistakable as soon a detected, that I was even
then, by means of the working itself, being prepared for the initiation
thereto.  The actual ceremony (using the word in its widest and deepest
sense) extended over some years and is in fact the sole key to the events
of that period.  An outline therefore must consequently form a separate
chapter, for without the light thereby thrown upon the facts of my career,
they must appear incoherent, inconsequential and unintelligible.  I was
destined to undergo a series of experiences which apparently contradict the
whole tendency of the past.  My actions seem incompatible with my
character; my environment seems incomprehensibly unnatural; in short, the
effect of the narrative is to suggest that by some jugglery the life of a
totally different individual has intruded upon my own.
     Now, years afterwards, it still seems to me as if for the whole period
of the initiation I had been transported into an unfamiliar world; their
history is a magical history in the most comically complete sense.  Its
events are neither real nor rational --- save only in relation to the
condition of an experiment, exactly as a candidate in freemasonry sees,
hears, speaks and acts with his normal senses, yet in a way which has no
relation to his previous experience.  The stolid old gentleman in evening
dress is really King Solomon.  He hears a rigmarole both false and
meaningless in itself, which he must understand as conveying something
entirely other than it apparently implies.  His words are put into his
mouth, and produce an effect neither expected, desired, nor understood.  He
performs a series of gestures neither comprehensible in themselves, nor
even (so far as he can see) calculated to assist his purpose.  And even
when, at the end, he finds that he has complied with the prescribed
conditions and achieved his object, he is unable to bring what has taken
place into rational relation with his ordinary life.  The situation is only
the more bewildering that from first to last each incident in itself is
perfectly common place.
     Such is my own point of view with regard to my adventures in America.
They are all perfectly probably in themselves, perfectly intelligible
regarded

{723}




















as details of a ritual; but they contradict every probability of human life
as commonly understood.  The chain of my career snaps suddenly; yet it
continues as if it had never been broken from the moment that my initiation
is over.  The effect is to persuade me that this period of my life is in
the nature of a dream.  I meet strange monsters; one phantom succeeds
another without a shadow of coherence.  Even those incidents which help me
to recognize that I am the central figure of the dream complete my
conviction of its unreality.































{724}




























                              75


     It is one of the regular jokes in India that people on the strength of
the season in Calcutta write a book about the peninsula, but even the
tourist of genius, like Charles Dickens, is far more presumptuous when he
tackles the United States.  India indeed is huge and varied beyond hope of
human comprehension, but America, though its population is only a third of
that of Hindustan, is composed of elements infinitely more varied, besides
which India does at least stand still and allow one to look at it, whereas
the United States undergoes a revolutionary change continually.  I passed
through the country in 1900.  In 1906 I found it unrecognizable.  My third
visit in 1914 gave me another surprise, and during the following five years
when I was actually resident the panorama shifted with kaleidoscopic
swiftness.
    I have now learnt enough to realize that any attempt at description
must inevitably be futile and that any opinion cannot but be presumptuous
and misleading.  Yet the subject is by far the most important in every
respect which I have ever had to consider and I cannot possibly offer my
autohagiography to the impatient public without doing my best to set down
what I think.
     Intellectual generalizations must be discarded as insulting to my own
intelligence as much as to the reader's.  There is only one possible
procedure; to state boldly a number of striking facts which came under my
direct observation, leaving their significance and importance to fight for
their own ends, but also to call upon the only testimony of equally assured
liability, my spiritual intuition.
     I admit frankly that the whole of my intellectual opinion and
practically all my personal prejudice combine to condemn the United States
wholesale with absolute contempt and loathing and this attitude will
undoubtedly manifest itself whenever the subject crops up in the course of
these reminiscences, for my normal conscious self is generally speaking as
the writer of these pages.  Against this my subconscious intuition, whose
judgment is to be trusted absolutely, is altogether opposed.  I propose
therefore to set forth first of all that which the Holy Spirit within me
moves to utter, and afterwards to record the observed facts which influence
my human consciousness to be so antagonistic to almost every feature of
life and thought as I found it.
     I definitely appeal to my American readers to stand apart from their
natural gratification at the first and their natural indignation at the
second of these sections of my work, and to understand that my spiritual
apprehension

{725}




















of truth represents my real self, while my intellectual perceptions are
necessarily coloured by my nationality, caste, education and personal
predilection.  I am not trying to shirk the responsibility for the harsh
judgments which I promulgate.  I should prefer to keep silent.  I speak
only in the hope that Americans may learn how shocking much of their morals
and manners is to the educated European, and I insist upon the intensity of
my utmost love for them and faith in their future, so that they may
discriminate between my criticisms and those of such people as Mrs Asquith
who are unable to go deeper than the facts and cherish an unalloyed
animosity.
     Let me then begin by an analysis of my inmost spiritual sympathy for
the people of the United States.  First of all, let me explain about
Europe.  The war of 1914, and its sequel of revolution and economic
catastrophe, is in my eyes the culmination of its many centuries of
corruption by Christianity.  The initial lesion was due to the decay of the
Roman republican virtue.  The immediate effect of the rise of Christianity
was the break-up of social order, the suppression of philosophy and
scholarship by fanaticism and the gradual engulfment of enlightenment in
the Dark Ages.  A partial resurrection was brought about by the Renaissance
and from that moment began the long struggle between science and freedom on
the one hand and dogmatism and tyranny on the other.  During the ninteenth
century, the triumph of the former seemed assured and almost complete.  The
forces of obscurantism and reaction were driven into dark corners but their
natural cunning developed by centuries of experience inspired them to a
final effort to regain their lost prestige and power.  They adopted a new
policy.  They ceased to oppose openly the advance of science and the
associated ethical and political principles which science indicated.  They
clipped the claws of the Lion of Enlightenment by establishing an unspoken
convention to the effect that it was bad form to insist upon applying the
new ideas to practical politics.  The Church of England was to retain its
official status in spite of its spiritual death.  Dissent and agnosticism
ought to be tolerated indeed but ignored.  The system of social snobbery
was to continue concurrently with the boast of the triumph of democratic
principles.  In every subject which might give rise to controversy there
was a tacit agreement not to tell the truth.  The people who persecuted
Byron, Shelley, Darwin, Bradlaugh and Foote smiled amiably at the much more
outspoken blasphemies of Bernard Shaw.  The hollowness of Christianity and
feudalism became shameless.  No one dared to defend his convictions, if
indeed he possessed them.  There was a universal conspiracy to shirk facing
the facts of life, with the result that the most complete moral darkness
shrouded the causes and conduct of the war.  We maintain our stupid shame
with desperate determinations.  A sham peace succeeded the sham war and the
only realities were the revolutions which reduced civilization to chaos.
Such reactions as that of Fascismo are manifestly phantasmagoric

{726}




















and I cannot but conclude that at least for a long period anarchy will
triumph in Europe.  I turn therefore to America from an expiring solar
system to a nebulous mass which I expect to develop into an organized
galaxy.
     The elements of the United States are heterogeneous in a manner
unprecedented in history.  Every race, language and creed of Europe is
represented.  There is, moreover, an established contingent of Africans, a
new infiltration of Asiatics, of whom the Jews are a critically important
factor in the social and economic problems of the day, while even the Far
East, despite fanatical opposition, is seeking to obtain a foothold.  That
so many inimical elements should consent to even a semblance of fraternity
indicates some common spiritual impulse sufficiently strong to dominate
lesser prejudices.  I find this unity in the aspiration to escape from the
restrictions of crystallized conventions.  Germans who resented military
service, Jews who found the pressure of persecution and ostracism
unendurable, Armenians obsessed by the fear of massacre, Italians to whom
the pettiness, poverty and priestcraft of their country were paralysing,
Irish insulted and injured by English oppression, all alike bring me to
America as a paradise of elbow room, liberty and prosperity.
     One aspect of this aspiration has a more general bearing.  All
Americans are eager for power, in one form or another.  They therefore
pursue with passionate ardour every path which promises knowledge as well
as those which lead directly to mastery of environment.  So powerful and so
irrepressible is this enthusiasm that the most grotesque disillusionments
fail to disgust them and no charlatanism so crude, no pretence so puerile,
no humbug so outrageous as to deter them from running after the next new
religion.  Their dauntless innocence persuades me that just as soon as they
have acquired the critical faculty, they will progress spiritually more
swiftly and sanely than has ever been known.
     At present two hindrances hamstring them.  Firstly, the desperate
death struggles of dogmatism, and secondly the practically universal
ignorance of the elements of spiritual science.  They insist on impossible
ideals and hoax themselves about their holiness to an extreme that English
hypocrisy at its zenith never approximates and their credulity is so crass
that the followers of Joanna Southcott, the Agapemonites and the peculiar
people seem by comparison philosophers and sages.  Yet all this
extravagance is but as the froth upon the crest of an irresistible breaker.
Even the puritan cruelty, the social savagery, the extravagant racial
ribaldry and the monomaniac stampede to acquire dollars testify more to the
energy and enthusiasm of the people than to its casual concomitants of
ignorance, delusion and fatuity which impress the ordinary observer.  They
are shrewd; none shrewder, lacking only the data to direct the shrewdness.
They will soon discover how to distinguish

{727}





















between genuine teachers and quacks, as also the fact that the power of
money is limited and can buy no food either for spirit or soul.  They will
then pursue the path of evolution on sane and scientific lines eschewing
unsound methods and unsatisfactory aims.
     My instinct has always assured me of this and stimulated my eagerness
to educate and initiate everyone I met.  I felt that fundamentally we were
brothers, and I believe that this intense sympathy was just what deepened
my disgust and darkened my despair at the impossibility of reaching them.
Morally, socially, intellectually, the gulf was not to be bridged.  There
was no common ground of comprehension.  When I insisted on scientific
methods, I met with fear lest the foundations of their faiths should be
shaken and every one of them come to some crazy creed, pompous, pretentious
and puerile.  When I tried to show them that conventional canons of conduct
were children of circumstance, belief in whose absolute ethical value
merely masked the face of truth and prevented them from perceiving nature,
they were simply shocked.  They had never inquired why any given virtue
should be valid.  The same of course applied to the question of creed.
Even those who wandered from teacher to teacher were fanatically convinced
that their momentary cult was perfect at every point.  I could not persuade
them that their admitted fickleness was evidence that their present creed
reflected a mere mood.
     My real fear for America is that when it finds a few axioms on which a
working majority can agree, a few dogmas to which it can rally, there will
be an immediate effort to crush out all incompatible ideas, and even to
atrophy its own possibilities of further development by extirpating any
growth of genius within its own ranks, exactly as was done by Rome.  In
this event the tyranny would be infinitely worse than anything in the
history of Christianity, for the worst of the moral defects of Americans is
cold-blooded cruelty --- their struggle against nature and the corrupting
influences of such vices as drunkenness and sexual immorality has let them
to value the harder virtues at the expense of the more human.
     The latter indeed are regarded as vices even by those who cherish them
in secret.  Thus, in spite of the extraordinary diversity of creeds, cults,
codes, fads and ideals, there lies the instinct to compel conformity.  The
whole history of the country has hammered into their heads the evident
truth that unity is strength.  Their very motto affirms it --- "E Pluribus"
"Unum".  Their history itself bears witness to this.  What was the Civil War
but a murderous struggle against secession?  Prussian methods were used to
dragoon the pacifist majority into fighting Germany, and prohibition was
put over by every unscrupulous trick against the will of the people.
Today, we see the Ku Klux Klan attempting to impose, by secret society
methods of anonymous menace backed by boycott, arson and assassination, the
ideals of a clique; and nearly

{728}





















as noxious are the arrogant aims and brutal tactics of Catholics and
freemasons.
     In their own way capital and labour are influenced by the same idea,
that of imposing a rigid and uniform rule on the entire community
regardless of local conditions or any other considerations which might make
for diversity.  I need hardly point out that this principle is in flat
contradiction with the Declaration of Independence in the constitution.  I
am afraid that the root of the evil lies in the psychological fact that men
proclaim the principles of freedom only when they are suffering from
oppression.  No sooner do they become free and prosperous than they begin
to perceive the duties of discipline.
     It is already shockingly manifest that the moral correspondences of
this tendency are in operation.  As Fabre D'Olivet points out in his
examination of "The Golden Verses of Pythagoras", initiation, that is
progress, requires that at every point the candidate should be confronted
with the free choice between actions dependent upon the three principal
virtues, courage, temperance and prudence.  The aim of American statecraft
is on the contrary to atrophy these virtues by making them unnecessary, and
indeed limiting full choice to unimportant matters.  A third spiritual
danger arises from the dogmatic idealism which determines social and
economic conditions.  So multiform is the prevailing error that the only
course is to oppose to it the true doctrine as follows:
     The growth of a nation depends on its ability to draw the greatest
nourishment from the greatest area of soil as against the pressure of rival
plants.  This depends, "certeris paribus", on the numbers.  Now numbers
depend on the willingness and ability of women to make child-bearing and
rearing the main business of life, and of the men to protect them and
support them at their task.  The surplus wealth may, nevertheless, be
invested in another way, calculated to increase efficiency and potential;
that is, in the support of a class which is not directly wealth producing
as such, the class of the learned.  This class must be abundantly supplied
with leisure and the apparatus for research and freed from all anxiety or
similar distractions.  It should in fact be treated as a guild or spiritual
fraternity.  The existence of any other class which does not pull its own
weight in the boat is evidence of plethora.
     The above principles are extremely simple and self-evident, but in
America they have been pushed out of sight by doctrinal propositions based
on "a priori" considerations of things as they ought to be in the mind of the
dogmatist.
     I still hope that experience will eliminate these errors, and in that
hope I address myself first of all to the American republic.
     Having thus affirmed the instinctive attitude to the American people,
let me turn to the other extreme and record a number of observations which

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seem specially significant, the deductions from which appear unmitigatingly
damning, but the antinomy with my spiritual standpoint is to be overcome by
interpreting these flagrant and atrocious faults as symptomatic only of
infantile and adolescent aberration, with the exception of a very few
individuals indeed, and those, almost invariably, either of pedigree stock
or educated by experience of Europe.
     An adult American is a "rara avis".  The actual conditions which
confront the developing intelligence are so incoherent and unintelligible
that the unity of background which Europeans inherit and imagine to be the
common property of mankind is absent.
     Let me illustrate my meaning.  In Europe we take for granted such
first principles as the limits of the possibility of development of any
given type of energy.  We assume, for instance, that the efficiency of the
areoplane depends upon the ratio of power to weight in the first place, the
increase of the former being limited by the theoretical potential of the
sources of energy at our disposal.  We also reflect that increase of size,
power and velocity involves the overcoming of obstacles which become more
formidable in geometrical progression.  Again, at certain points in the
advance, entirely new considerations begin to apply, such as the resistance
of our material to the pressure of air, and the physiological potentiality
of the airman.  To us this nexus seems an integral element of necessity.
     The average American argues in complete ignorance of any such
restriction.  To him, to double the power is to double the pace and so on.
His whole experience inflamed by his native enthusiasm reminds him that
during the last century innumerable inventions, which the greatest
authorities declared to be theoretically impossible, are now in daily use.
     Consider the discovery of radium; how it revealed the existence of a
form of energy enormously greater in quality than anything previously
known.  More, we can now calculate that atomic energy --- could we only
grasp it --- would stand to radium as radium to steam, or more so.  He is
therefore perfectly right in refusing to discredit, on common sense
grounds,the report that a cannon has been constructed to carry a shell
across the Atlantic, or a flying machine to go to the moon; an instrument
capable of detecting any conceivable fact about a man from a drop of his
blood; of penetrating the past or foretelling the future.  There is, in
fact, no theoretical limit to human attainment, for the simple reason that
nature is known to contain all conceivable and inconceivable forms of
energy and perceptive potentiality.  Concentrated on this conviction, he
constantly makes himself ridiculous, through ignorance of the details of
the patient progress of science.  Like other varieties of faith it lays its
votaries open to the most fantastic follies.
     I have shown elsewhere the psychological considerations which make
Americans accept this liability to error as an evil less than that of
hypocritical

{730}




















scepticism.  The condition is, of course, somewhat similar to that produced
by the administration of cocaine and the analogy is confirmed by the fact
that American nerves are ragged and raw.  The realities of life wreck their
victim.  In case of a general collapse of civilization under economic
stress, such as seem actually imminent at present, it is to be feared that
the shock to their spiritual self-sufficiency will find them unable to
resist reactions.  America, resenting the arrogance of Europe, refuses
angrily to admit the extent of her indebtedness, but in the case of
European anarchy, the main source of energy would be withdrawn.  Few
Americans realize that the moral, economic and selfish attitude towards sex
means ultimate disaster.  The emancipation of women, her ambition to
compete with men in commercial and intellectual pursuits is, at bottom, a
refusal to bear children, and this evidently implies the excessive increase
of a parasitic class which the community will be unable to support.
     It is notorious that the birth-rate is maintained by the immigrants.
After very few years of life in the States sterility sets in.  This, again,
is a symptom of the insensate idealism of American psychology.  Perceiving
that progress depends on transcending animality, and refusing to realize
the theoretical limitation of any such aspiration, they plunge into
perdition.  It is as if a man, admiring the beauty and perfume of the
water-lily and loathing the miry darkness of the bed of the lake, were to
sever the blossom from its root.  This fatuity is shown directly by their
attitude towards sex and indirectly by the attempt to suppress everything
that suggests self-indulgence.  The policy is disastrous.
     We should found society upon a caste of "men of earth", sons of the
soil, sturdy, sensual, stubborn and stupid, unemasculated by ethical or
intellectual education, but guided in their evolution by the intelligent
governing classes towards an ideal of pure animal perfection.  In such a
substratum variation will produce sporadic individuals of a higher type.
History affords innumerable examples of the lofty intelligence and the
noblest characters shooting up from the grossest stock.  Keats, Burns,
Sixtus the Fifth, Lincoln, Boehme, Faraday, Joseph Smith, Whitman, Renan,
Arkwright, Watts, Carlyle, Rodin and innumerable other men of the highest
genius came of peasant parentage.  Few indeed of the first class have been
born of intellectually developed families.
     The conditions of genius are not accurately known.  But we may divide
the class into two great groups; those in whom the development is a system
of degeneration, and those who, though sometimes exhibiting the most
exquisite fruition, fail to attain full development and achieve the work of
which they should be capable through their frailty.  The men whose
achievement is uniform are always constitutionally robust; despite all
difficulties they attain a great age and produce continuously.  Rodin,
Browning,

{731}





















Carlyle, Pasteur, Lister, Kelvin, Gladstone, Whitman were all grand old
men.  (That Carlyle was an invalid merely emphasizes this essential
figure.)
     To insure the supply, we need only plant a prosperous and prolific
peasantry, watch the children for indications of genius, and pick out any
promising specimens for special training on the lines which their
tendencies indicate.  The worst thing they can do is what is done in
America, to disenchant the man of earth with his destiny; to fill him with
the facts and fancies that enthral etiolated and degenerated idealists and
unfit him for his evident purpose, that of supplying society with supermen.
It is not only impossible to try to make a silk purse our of a sow's ear.
It is an idealistic imbecility.  The demand for silk purses is extremely
limited, whereas sows' ears always come in handy.
     America is seething with anarchy on every plane, because of the
constantly changing economic conditions, the conflict between creeds,
casts, codes, cultures and races.  Society has never had a chance to settle
down.  The expansion westward, the discovery of gold, coal, iron and oil,
the slavery question, the secession question, the constant flux caused by
the development of technical science, the religious and moral instability,
the conflict between federal centralization and state sovereignty, the
congestion of cities, the exploitation of the farmer by the financier, the
shifting of the economic centre of gravity, these and a thousand other
conditions arising from the unprecedented development of the country
combine to make it impossible even to imagine stability in any plane of
life.  There is thus a radical distinction between Europe and her daughter.
We know more or less what to expect in any set of circumstances.
Heterogeneous as we are there is a common ground of thought and action.  We
are even able to draw reasonable conclusions about Asia and Africa.  London
and Tokyo are sufficiently alike in essentials to make our relations
intelligible, but in spite of the community of language, customs,
commercial conventions, and so on, between London and New York, the
difference between us is really more radical.  There are many incalculable
factors in any formula which connects the United States with Europe.
     Let me give a few obvious illustrations.  Almost all Europeans suppose
skyscrapers to be monstrosities of vanity.  They are in fact necessary
consequences of the conditions of New York City, as fogs were of the
climate and situation of London and the physical properties of the
available fuel.  New York expanded as it had on account of, first, the
vastness of its harbour, and, second, its situation on the Hudson, and as
the most convenient outlet for the produce of the hinterland.
     Manhattan Island, being so long and narrow, presented peculiar
problems of transportation.  To this is due the system of elevated and
underground

{732}





















railways.  The width of the water which separates if from Long Island, New
York State and New Jersey limited its expansion in those directions.  Even
with bridges and subways, transport was tedious and congested.  The evident
consequence was that the value of land in Manhattan became prohibitive.
The final determinant is the fact that the island consists of a scant
deposit of soil on a foundation of granite capable of supporting any
possible strain.  It was accordingly an architectural possibility and an
economic advantage to increase the height of the buildings, and this height
was, in its turn, limited by economic considerations.
     The early architects went gaily ahead.  They saw no reason to suppose
that they need ever stop, but presently actuarial calculation showed that
thirty-six storeys represented the maximum of economic efficiency.  Beyond
that height the disproportionate increase in the cost of building and the
difficulty of renting the loftier suites, on account of the fear of fire,
made the higher buildings unprofitable.  It is of perculiar interest, by
the way, to observe that the artists were so impregnated with with the
Buddhist ideal of impermanence that in even the costliest buildings they
calculated the life of the plumbing as at no more than twenty years; that
is, they expected, from one cause or another, that the building would be
superseded within that period.
     The actual situation, by the way, is critical.  There are, roughly
speaking, two and a half of the seven and a half million people of Great
New York put to grave inconvenience by the congestion and all alike are
embarrassed by the ratio of rent to income.  In Europe we reckon that rent
should not absorb more than one tenth or at most one eighth of one's
earning.  In New York, this proportion is rarely less than one fourth and
sometimes more than on third.  Again, despite all efforts to establish a
satisfactory system of transport, conditions are appalling.  In the rush
hours, the people are crushed like corn in a mill.  One sees clusters of
citizens hanging to the steps of a trolley car like a swarm of bees.  The
surface traffic is practically paralysed.  I have know it take fifty
minutes for a motor bus to get from 34th to 58th Street, walkable easily in
less than twenty minutes.  Except the few plutocrats with automobiles of
their own, or residences within reasonable distance of their places of
business, the average citizen has anything from fifty minutes to two hours
to travel in this packed and pestilential conveyance twice daily.  The
waste of energy, the nervous strain, the physical fatigue and the annoyance
all tell on his health and spirits.  No wonder if indigestion and
neurasthenia make him an old man at thirty-five.
     But the worst is yet to come.  Every year the congestion increases.
The percentage of time and strength and money wasted and unnatural effort
becomes more oppressive and exhaustive.  Every desperate device imaginable
is being tried,but the problem grows faster than the palliatives and one
really wonders what will happen when things reach a deadlock, when

{733}




















nobody can pay his rent or get to his business; when, in short, it becomes
impossible to carry on, what will follow the crash.  Any diminution in the
population would mean that rates and taxes would have to be further
increased and so drive more and more away from the city.  The logical issue
seems to be desertion and decay; this obviously involving the collapse of
the machinery of export, and so the ruin of the producer in the interior.
     In the past, if my suspicions be sound, cities like Nineveh perished
in some such way.  Their prosperity led them to live beyond their means.
They made up the deficit by constantly bleeding the provinces, thus
eventually killing the goose the laid the golden eggs.  To me, the present
prosperity of the United States, like that of England under Queen Victoria,
is due to the coincidence of various favourable but temporary conditions.
In England, the invention of the spinning jenny, the steam engine and
similar automatic ways of producing wealth, the opening up of new markets,
the expansion of commerce and colonial success made us rich factiously.
Similar processes are still at work in the States.
     The vast wealth in almost every commodity became easy to exploit
through the introduction of scientific methods and labour-saving machinery.
The supply of cheap labour from exhausted Europe, and the removal of all
restrictions to expansion by the extent of elbow room and the overcoming of
natural obstacles; all these conditions have made America the commercial
mistress of the planet.
     She has not even been disturbed and hampered by any serious internal
or external struggle since 1865.  The Spanish War was a holiday and the A.
E. F. little more than an organized extension of the normal tide of
tourists.  She has never had to fight for her life; she has never had a
serious sickness, but now this curve is approaching if it has not already
attained its summit.  The colonization is complete.  People are beginning
to jostle each other.  Europe can no longer pay for her produce.  The
absence of moral unity is creating class conflict.  The problems of
politics are too vast and varied for even genius to grasp; the apparatus of
order, both moral and physical, is showing signs of an imminent breakdown.
The interests of the five principal sections of the country become more
obviously incompatible.  Any serious setback might cause disaster in a
dozen different directions.
     They talk of the melting pot.  The metaphor is not bad.  For the last
sixty years they have pitched into it indiscriminately everything that came
along.  They protest passionately that the product must be that perfect
gold, the "one hundred per cent. American", which may be defined as the
wish phantasms of a Sunday School superintendent, a romantic flapper, an
unscrupulous usurer, and a maudlin medium, worked up into a single
delirious nightmare.  More likely the interaction of all these formidable
forces will result in an explosion.  My faith in the future of the States
is fixed on

{734}




















some rational reconstruction after revolution.  The present attempt to
amalgamate this fortuitous hotch-potch, neither calculating probabilities
nor observing actualities, but asserting an amiable postulate as if it were
axiomatic, is born of an illusion invented by despair of acting with
intelligence; and when the moment of awakening arrives the disillusionment
may shock them at first into insanity.  Nothing less is likely to show them
that human nature is a stubborn reality which no amount of humouring,
befooling and bullying will alter.
     These preliminary speculations set forth, I will now try to justify
the diagnosis by exhibiting the salient symptom.  For convenience I have
classed my observations under a few principal heads.  I shall show how
America differs from Europe in its attitude towards law and order.  I shall
give examples of the unfathomable ignorance which prevails even among the
most highly educated people, not merely of well established facts of what
in Europe is called common knowledge, but of the most elementary principles
of nature, that is to say of facts which quite illiterate Europeans would
know instinctively without having to learn them.  I shall give examples of
the impotence of their extravagant idealism to preserve them from outraging
European convention of honour and good manners.  Lastly, I shall illustrate
the callousness and cruelty which characterize the people as a result of
their fanatical faith in absolute standards of rectitude and definition of
duty to one's neighbour as espionage and tyranny.
     I will ask the reader to analyse each incident in order to discover
the simple and radical motive which underlies the overt action.  I hope
thus to make it clear that even the most absurd and atrocious abominations
are, so to speak, accidents caused by the impact of facts with which the
American is unfitted to deal, owing to his childlike ignorance,
inexperience and lack of all sense of proportion; so that to every crisis
he can bring only the intense impulsive energy of instinct.

     In 1912 I took it into my head to write three essays on American art
and literature, past, present and future.  I only completed the first,
which is published in the "English Review".  It aroused a hurricane across
the Atlantic and, hard as it is to believe, the echoes have not yet died
away.
     Within the last twelve months it was violently attacked by one of
America's best poets, Robert Haven Schauffler.  I make a point of
mentioning the fact.  He accused me of prejudice and unfairness, ignorant
of course that my essay was but one of three and that my plan had been to
express the friendliest faith in the future.  As it stands, my judgment is
no doubt severe, but I see little to modify.
     Poe and Whitman are still in my opinion the only first-rate writers
until very recent years.  I still find Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier,
Emerson, Bret

{735}




















Harte, Mark Twain and the rest devoid of any title soever to rank among the
sons of genius.  I might admit that they possessed great talents, but that
is foreign to the question.  I had been prevented from writing the other
two essays partly because the editor, following his invariable rule, broke
his pledged word to me, and partly because my heart was broken by the
perusal of the books which I had asked Leila Waddell to bring back from
America to furnish me with material.  They left me without a glimmer of
hope.  The trashiest piffle of England was Swinburne and Stevenson by
comparison.  The morality of American authors was too ghastly to
contemplate.  The artistic unity of the entire output consisted in its
commonplace coarseness, behind which was the fixed determination to go for
the dollars.   There was neither ambition nor conscience anywhere.  My
already zero opinion dropped below the liquid air mark.
     My first personal acquaintance with the actual conditions of the
present time did not improve matters noticeably.  My first glimmer of hope
was supplied by the "candle and the flame" of George Sylvester Viereck.
Here at least was a man with a mind of his own, a worthy aspiration and an
excellent technique, even though the actual achievement was nothing to
leave home for.  His prose was better.  The "Confessions of a Barbarian"
which purport to describe Europe are excellent.  Europe is the stalking
horse from behind which he shoots his wit.  Every shot tells, and all are
aimed at America.  No better study of the United States has ever been
written.
     Through Viereck I met his friend Alexander Harvey who professed to
admire my work and offered me the opportunity to reciprocate.  At first I
failed.  I had somehow got the fine idea that he lacked virility and
seriousness, and that his work was a shadow show.  I had not understood my
author.  Only after reading "Shelley's Elopement" and his book on Howells did
I attain full insight into his mind and manner.  But, having done so, a
great light dawned upon me.  I had to acknowledge him as a master.  In the
series of essays on which I am working at present I have consecrated one to
him.  I need only observe there that Alexander Harvey, more subtle and
ethereal than Poe himself, possesses a delicacy and a sense of humour as
exquisite, elfish, elusive as any man that ever wrote.  His irony is
incomparably keen.  That I should have missed the point taught me a much
needed lesson.
     To pick up a book, persuaded that no good thing can come out of
Nazareth, makes appreciation impossible.
     Harvey introduced me to Edwin Markham, whose "The Man with the Hoe, and"
"other poems" is assuredly first-rate of its kind.  His work is uneven and it
would be absurd to assert that he is of outstanding excellence.  He lacks
the stature of the sacred legion, but at least he proved to me the
existence of what I had till then doubted; a poet true to himself and
fearless of opinion; capable oh high aims, conscientious in pursuing them
and

{736}



















courageous in proclaiming them.  I looked about me from that moment for a
second poet, but here indefatigable research proved fruitless.  Self-styled
poets and poetesses are as common in America as common bacilli in a
choleraic colon.  They swim and squeal and squabble and stink unbelievably.
      The principal poetess present was E. W. Wilcox, looking exactly like
a shaved sow plastered with brilliant unguents in a Greek dress and with a
wreath on her wig.  It was to vomit!  In Europe, outside negligible cliques
in Soho, buzzing round people like Ezra Pound and even smaller patchers of
pretence in Paris, poets have some sense of dignity.  They do try to write,
and talk as little as possible about it.  In America poetry is a branch of
the patent medicine business.  The medicine does not matter; what does is
the label, the puff and the faked testimonial.
     A very few manage somehow or other to turn out occasional stanzas,
with some kind of idea in them fluently and even powerfully, but with the
exception of Markham and Schauffler there is practically nobody at all who
even understands what poetry means.  The one aim is self advertisement.
     In the matter of prose, the situation is altogether different.  As
remarked elsewhere, the first urgent need of the country is a critic whose
words carry weight, who knows good from bad, and could not be bullied or
bribed.  These were found in William Marion Ready, Michael Monahan and H.
L. Mencken.  The two former were not fully efficient.  They were too
refined to take off their shirts and plunge head foremost into the rough
and tumble, but Mencken understood the psychology of the cattle he was out
to kill, and he poleaxed them properly.  Having thus secured the services
of of a fighting editor the rest of the staff felt free to do their work as
they wanted it done and the result has been the startling sudden appearance
of a regular army of authors and even dramatists who really matter.
Conditions being as they are all red revolutionists are necessarily savage
satirists; they dare not waste time in wooing beauty till the war is won.
We find, therefore, Theodore Dreiser, Lewis Sinclair (as opposed to his
hysterical, though well-intentioned, namesake Upton) and others of their
school, who seem to regard themselves as a committee appointed to report on
the ravages of respectability.  Novel after novel describes unflinchingly
the realities of life in America in its various departments.
     Upton Sinclair and his school fail by overdoing it.  Their sentimental
indignation is just as false as the shop on the other side of the street.
Howells and Chambers and all those pullulating boosters of the red-blooded,
clean living hundred per cent. Gibson young man and his female rival them
in invertebrate idealism.  But the new school of realism makes a point of
being just.  The characters live; they are not mere excuses for piling up
epithets.  Yet beneath the feet of the actors is the stage and behind them
a background.

{737}






















That stage is rotten.  The foundation is equally social injustice and moral
falsity.  The background is equally bad.  The scene is set for an obscene
farce.  The work of this school is at last beginning to tell.  A constantly
increasing percentage of Americans are beginning to understand that the
vague horror which haunted them is the miasma of manufactured immorality.
They see that the deliberate attempt to standardize social conditions, to
trample originality under foot, to ostracize genius, to discipline life in
every detail is turning the land of the free into a convict settlement and
modelling civilization upon that of the ant.
     Alexander Harvey stands outside this body of Warriors.  His spirit is
less in touch with the brutalities of daily life.  His race is unblemished
and he began his career in diplomacy.  He was thus able to develop his fine
and intricate passion for pure beauty without being constantly jostled by
the hurrying fiends of commerce.  He is able to treat American society as a
joke.  His characters are, for the most part, raised above the hubbub of
hustle.  America wounds him only in his spiritual nerves.  The most hideous
of the demons which haunts him is what he calls the native American of
Anglo-Saxon origin and his ivory is aimed at the less obvious atrocities of
his environment.
     One other figure stands apart, olympic and titanic in one.  As I have
tried to show in my essay ("The Reviewer", July 1923) James Branch Cabell is
a world genius of commanding stature.  He comes of famous stock and
occupies an excellent social position, being secluded on his own property
in Virginia.  The turmoil of Main Street and the animal noises of the
jungle are born to him as echoes from afar.  The realities of modern
America consequently occupy only one salient of his battle front, which
extends from the seat of Jove himself to deepest Tartarus.  All periods of
history contribute to his pages and his characters include personifications
of eternal principles, legendary demons an monsters of every type;
eponymous heroes of fables and romance, and the everyday individuals of the
modern world.  Between these infinitely diverse orders of being, he makes
no difference.  All are equally real and mingle freely with each other.
His epic includes Mother Cerida, one of the seven powers of destiny, her
function being to cancel everything out.  Helen of Troy, Merlin, the tyrant
Dionysys and President Roosevelt fall each one in the proper place.  His
thesis covers the whole field of philosophy, but its ultimate conclusion
--- to date --- seems to be almost identical with that of Main Street: that
all aspiration is futile, attainment impossible in the nature of things.
     Like James Thomson, however, as I have demonstrated in my essay on
him, he has so extended the scope of his argument as to leave no possible
escape by withdrawal to some loftier plane.  Nevertheless, his intellectual
acquiescence in the ineluctable futility of life, his gentle blood and his
godlike

{738}





















genius compel him to make an irrational exception of this law in some quite
inexplicable manner, and heroism wins through.  Even as things stand, I
regard Cabell as by far the greatest genius of his genus that has yet
appeared on this planet.  Before him nobody ever conceived so all-embracing
a theme.  Yet I am still unsatisfied!  I demand that he shall be developed
towards the solution of his problem, and perceive that the contradictory
thesis is equally true: that the most trivial, vain and fatuous events, if
rightly understood, are sublime; that the slough of despond is but an
optical illusion created by the shadow of the snow-pure summits of success.
     I have been accused of exaggerated enthusiasm for Cabell.  The more
stupid and mean-minded have even explained my ardour by my appreciation of
the compliment which Mr Cabell paid me by using my Gnostic Mass as the
material for Chapter XXII of his "Jurgen".  The suggestion is utter rubbish;
though, at the same time, I admit cordially that no other form of
appreciation of my work would have pleased me half so well.
     I regard his epic of such supreme importance to mankind as an
exposition of the nature of the universe that I have not only sent him a
copy of "The Book of the Law" in the hope that he may find in it the way out
of his Buddhistic demonstration that "everything is sorrow" but followed it
up by letter after letter urging him to use it, for his work cannot attain
perfection until it culminates in a positive conclusion.
     For many years he toiled at his task almost neglected.  It is hardly
nice to reflect that he only became famous when the smut-smeller society
succeeded in suppressing "Jurgen" as obscene.  I must admit, none the less,
that when "Beyond Life" was sent me for review (the first I had heard of him)
while perceiving straight away its excellence, I had no idea of its
importance.  It let the matter rest there.  Then "Jurgen" reached me and I
saw at once not only that the book was a supreme masterpiece, but extended
my understanding of its stable companion.  I proceeded to grab as many of
his books as I could.  Each volume opened a new world to my vision.  It was
not clear why he had not impressed even the best critics as he deserved.
Nobody had seen that each volume, apparently self-sufficient, was in
reality one chapter, a single vast epic.  The more I read and re-read, the
more fully I realize the extent of his empire.
     I have gone into this at some length in order to firstly stress the
importance of the work, and to prevent any reader supposing that any one
book will give an adequate idea of his genius.







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