The Jewish Problem Re-Stated by a Gentile [Aleister Crowley]

Ed. This essay emerged from a time of chronic Anti-Semitic feeling in the West. Crowley saw in this pervasive oppression an affinity with the troubles to be visited upon Thelemites. He speculated about a union between Thelema and Judaism, as at other times he thought to unite Buddhism, Islam and some forms of Christianity with Thelema. Written long before the horrors of the Holocaust and the subsequent restoration of the State of Israel, this essay may tread too closely on the abyss of pain for modern readers. There is more than one kind of diaspora, as more than one kind of captivity.

First publication: The English Review 35 (London: July 1922), 28-37. Although this is the text as originally published, Crowley's typescript is substantially longer and contains more extensive Thelemic discussion.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

A distinguished article entitled "The Cry of the Modern Pharisee," by the Rev. Joel Blau, of Temple Peni-El, New York City, which recently appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, posed the Jewish problem in new dimensions. In America, where this problem is growing acute, wide interest was aroused. I quote a few passages which are characteristic.

"It is depressing to see the Jewish problem discussed, even by Jews, from without and not from within, as if its inner aspect did not matter; at all events, as if this were something in which the world at large need take no interest, it being the concern of a few Jewish zealots only. Over against this mistaken position these very Jewish zealots, who are far from obsolete, claim that the only way to solve the Jewish problem is from within. Find the right solution for the internal problem of the Jew, and the external problem, created by the persistence of anti-Semitism, will solve itself."

". . . he [the Pharisee] would rather lose the whole world than lose aught of the riches of his soul.

". . . As for pride, he admits it, yet holds himself guiltless. For pride is no sin, except when one will not live up to it.

"It [pride] is compounded of a clear knowledge of one's place, a consciousness of both powers and limitations, and a desire to participate wholeheartedly in the passionate business of living. This pride is the child of reverence, the last summing-up of the sanctities of Individuality.

"Its presence is the distinguishing sign of divinely stubborn men, 'terribly meek,' who inherit the earth--and heaven, too.

"Of peoples too, even as of persons, the same holds true; modesty is a sin in any people. The chief duty that a people owes both itself and the world is reverence for its own soul, the mystic centre of its being. . . .

"Personality spells the mystery of mysteries--the last word of life for which all the worlds and all the ages are in ceaseless travail."

"The Jew must be led back to the Discovery of the Jewish Soul."

Despite these utterances, we find elsewhere in the essay that the only practical solution in view is repatriation. A physical Zion is contemplated, and this proposal implies the very materialism which the learned Rabbi deplores as the mark of the modern Sadducee. Now the division between Jew and Gentile dates only from Abraham. The children of uncircumcision no less than those of the Covenant are of the seed of Adam, of mankind. It was by means of the secret tradition of the Hebrews that the leader of the hosts of the new Law obtained "the knowledge and conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel," whose words constitute the whole Law. This Law is the master-key to the Future of Mankind, and the learned Rabbi, being a master in Israel, is able to interpret the Zeitgeist intuitively. Accordingly, he exhibits a profound comprehension of this Law; indeed, he actually expresses some of its corollaries in various phrases. What then is the one weakness of his admirable essay? What is it that compels him to a sceptical conclusion, despite the sublimity of courage, pride, and sadness which informs his thought, and the magistral grasp of the situation? These qualities demand consummate respect; and yet their owner hesitates to articulate an "Everlasting Yea." The difficulty arises from the interference of the learned Rabbi's intellectual perception of the conditions of his environment with the truth of his soul. He must hold fast to this truth if it is to make him free. The Relative must not be applied as a measure of the Absolute, of which it is but one of the infinitely numerous symbolic representations. It is, then, here that the Rev. Joel Blau is tempted to lose touch with the essential truth. He has still to pass through the ordeal of being attacked by phenomena which threaten or allure, seeking to turn him from his spiritual integrity. It is the task of the initiate to learn to ignore these seeming facts, to recognise that these are vapours of the void. Let me say at once that the Jewish spirit cannot be destroyed any more than a grain of sand or an ohm of electrical resistance. The problem is perennial. If every Jew were instantaneously abolished, the Jewish problem¹ would remain unaltered.

The Rev. Joel Blau had himself demonstrated, with admirable clearness, that the "extraversion" of modern Sadducees has merely defiled their honour, and that reliance upon outworn formalism has failed to protect the integrity of the Pharisees.

When Moses gave His new Law, His was the Word which expressed the spiritual truth fit for that age and that folk. Other Masters have appeared from time to time with other words. Thus the Buddha, proclaiming the absence of Atman, emancipated the East from its time-rotted conditions. Mohammed, with His Word Allah, proclaimed a new aeon in which the diversity of phenomena should be referred to a single ultimate source.

The solution of the Jewish Question has baffled society completely since the earliest records. It is quite evident that before the Exodus Pharaoh was confronted by precisely the same dilemma as the Tsar of yesterday in Russia and the President of today in America. It is the problem of an endothermic chemical compound. The instability of chloride of nitrogen does not lead us to "blame" either the nitrogen or the chlorine; the elements tend to fly apart with destructive violence because neither of them is satisfying its own true nature to the full. Each has joined the other without enthusiasm because it could find no more suitable element union with which would fulfil to the uttermost its need of a complement. Nitrogen chloride is not formed if the chlorine passes over moist sodium before reaching the ammonia, or if that ammonia has been mixed with nitric acid.

Jew and Gentile have been forced into contact under innumerable varieties of social condition. Friction has been at a minimum when the Jew has been in contact either with Arabic civilisation or English jurisprudence. These two environments have a common factor: non-interference. English indifference and Moslem self-respect are agreed on the ethical principle: "Mind your own business." This is one of the moral postulates of true Law.

The incompatibility between Jew and Gentile has been based, superficially indeed, upon prejudice, ignorance, and instinctive antipathy; but this seems hardly more than a disguise for the real motive, which may more probably be the fear of alien aggression. The Jews are charged with many crimes, from ritual murder and usury to lack of patriotism. But all these charges are merely diverse expressions of the feeling that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between two spirits whose juxtaposition is an offence to nature.

Is it presumptuous to feel sure that so far one may count upon the assent of the learned Rabbi to this analysis? No? Then why not be bold enough to proceed to synthesis? Let us pursue the chemical analogy. In a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium nitrate the atoms of nitrogen and chlorine are intimately mingled; but there is no tendency to explosion. The reason is that both elements have already--in the main matter--fulfilled their own natures. Neither is unsatisfied; neither is under stress.

Is there no hint here to guide us to a practical proposal? It is useless to tinker with the environment of chloride of nitrogen; the more we meddle with the explosive, the more likely we are to provoke a crisis. We must prevent the formation of the substance altogether; and so long as either element is unsatisfied, so long is there a risk of conditions occurring in which they will combine disastrously with each other. Just as most human beings contract unsuitable marriages, or experiment with unconsecrated unions, rather than suffer the physiological agony of abstention; just as the only secure social system rests on a basis of sexually satisfied individuals; so countries inhabited by heterogeneous races invite civil collision if the inherited instincts of any race are starved or suppressed.

Now it is the historical fact that from the time of Abraham's discontented departure from his father's pastures, and the dream-drawn journey of Joseph, to the desperate adventure of Moses in search of a "promised land," and the continual craving for a Messiah, the Spirit of the Jew, behind all its expressions, is stamped with the stigma of soul-starvation. The patriotic passion of the Chroniclers, the plaintive cries of the Psalmists, the relentless rage of the Prophets, the acrid agony of Ecclesiastes, each in its own way expresses the fact that the Jew has always wanted Something desperately, has never known precisely what it was, has never fooled himself for very long into fancying that he has found it. When national degradation and religious mummification had reduced the ragged remnant of repatriated refugees to despair, Paul proclaimed his Freudian Phantasm as the Messiah. But in vain did he try to conciliate his people, in vain did he prove that Christ fulfilled the prophecies, in vain did he seek to reconcile circumcision and crucifixion. Israel preferred to die in the dark rather than stumble by the light of corpse-candles into the ditch of self-deception.

The same spirit stamps the Jew to this day. He has endured every possible persecution; without faith, hope, or love to help him. He has not found himself in wealth, power, or anything else. Neither Spinoza in philosophy, Heine in poetry, nor Einstein in science have found any way of escape from the fiend appointed to scourge Israel. From the most sublime complaints of the musician to the grossest grumblings of the Schnorrer, the same phrase recurs: it is the cry from the Abyss, the shriek of the lost soul. The glories of Solomon did not prevent him from seeing the vanity of all things; nor would repatriation in Palestine delude one single Jew into supposing that his soul could be satisfied by so romantically narcotic a remedy.

The solution of the Jewish problem is simply this: "Shiloh shall come." The Messiah must arise, and His name shall be called Anti-Christ. And this shall be the sign of the Messiah, Anti-Christ, He who shall lead at last His people Israel into the Holy Mountain, the True Zion: He shall come to understand the Magical Formula of Israel; He shall interpret the history of Israel; He shall declare unto Israel the nature of the spirit of the people; He shall express the true purpose of His people; He shall demonstrate to them the direction of their destiny; He shall formulate their function in the physiology of mankind.

It may indeed be that this function is such that even its free fulfillment would not satisfy it. He, the Messiah, Anti-Christ, shall know, as others do not, whether it be so. In our own bodies there are principles which never cease to urge us. The secret of the Soul of Israel may be that it is a ferment; the history of humanity shows us this spirit constantly consuming every civilisation with which it has been in contact. Israel has corrupted the world, whether by conquest, by conversion, or by conspiracy. The Jew has eaten his way into everything. The caricature of Semitic thought, Christianity, rotted Roman virtue through introducing the moral subterfuge of vicarious atonement. The Eagles of Caesar degenerated to the draggled buzzards of Constantine. Soon they were no more than hens, dispersed and devoured by the fierce hawks of Mohammed and the savage ravens of the North. Jewish commercial cleverness has created cosmopolitanism. Jewish sympathy with suffering has made the cliffs of caste to crumble. Jewish ethical exclusiveness has created a tyranny of conventional formalities to replace the righteousness of self-respect. The Jew, living so long on sufferance, by subterfuge, servility, and self-effacement, has taught his tricks to the whole world. Civilisation is an organised system of craft, concealment, cunning, camouflage, of cringing cowardice and craven callousness. The world is one great Ghetto. The Jew has failed to realise himself; and, as the learned Rabbi so brilliantly breaks out at the end of the third paragraph of his article, it is in infamy that Gentile and Jew are reconciled at last. Gentile and Jew bend on the same bench of the galley; the same whip drips with blood from the bare backs of the two brothers in bondage. We share the same suffering and shame; we eat the same bitter bread of exile.

Neither of us has known who he is, dared to be himself, or willed to do his Will. Neither has kept the Silence which alone preserved his soul from profanation. It was far better when ignorance and prejudice prevailed; we had at least faith in our own fetiches. It is better to have something that one is willing to die for, though it be but a lie; to have something to live for, though it be but a dream. Today, Jew and Gentile alike are pursuing despicable objects by dishonourable devices; and, having attained them, there is disillusion, disgust, and despair. We have swept away the superstitions which sustained our self-respect. We have discovered that the sun is only one star of many; and, perceiving our infinitesimal importance, we have lost our own respective stars--our self-esteem.

We have still to complete analysis by synthesis. Instead of interpreting Democracy as confusion in a common degradation, we must understand that, although each individual is equally an element of existence with every other, each is sublimely itself. Mankind is a republic of aristocrats; our equality is that of the essential organs of the body. The honour of each is to secure the harmony of all. It is the most fatal error of modern thought to interpret the dependence of each of us upon the rest as confounding us all in a common vileness.

One may appeal to the learned Rabbi then, out of his own mouth, to accept the Law of Thelema² as the foundation of the future of Israel. One may ask him to agree that the salvation of Israel depends upon understanding the spirit of that people in the light of history, ethnology, and psychology. Having understood its function, and formulated its will in a fixed phrase, it is only necessary to keep its unswerving course, each Jew as his own soul shows him for himself, and for the race, as the soul of the race is shown him, by the spirit of Anti-Christ, the Messiah, who shall arise in Israel for this purpose.

One word in reconciliation of an apparent antinomy. One must not think of Anti-Christ as opposed to Christ, any more than one thinks of the pleura as opposed to the lungs which it bounds. Woman is not the opposite of man--the difference between them is necessary to their co-operation. Without it, neither could reproduce their common elements in either component. Every star is necessarily different from every other star. The annihilation of one would disturb the equilibrium of all, and destroy the universe. The Jewish spirit is an essential element of humanity. The pitiable tragedies of the past have been the result of failing to understand, to insist upon, to execute, the eternal office of each existing individual idea. The arising of Anti-Christ will make possible the coming of Christ. If Christ came, he was baulked, as He himself is supposed to have said, because no one was ready to receive Him.

As the first paragraph of "The Cry of the Modern Pharisee" points out, non-resistance defies power. Mechanics presumes opposition. Structuralisation depends upon the co-operation of diverse unities, each of which is stubbornly itself. Evolution is aristocratic. To aim at homogeneity is to revert to nullity. There is then no reason to fear that Anti-Christ, in establishing Israel, will injure Christianity. He will, on the contrary, assist the Christian spirit to cleanse itself from the confused acquiescence in anarchical amiability which it calls "charity," and is really cowardice, really the slave's shame of his own condition, the sense of guilt which he soothes by minimising all misdemeanours.

Let Anti-Christ arise, let Him announce to Israel its integrity. Let Him make clear the past, purged of all tribal jargon; let Him prove plainly how inevitably event came after event. Let Him gather the past to a point; let Him assign its proper position to the present by showing its relation with the axes of Space and Time. Let Him then calculate what forces are focussed at that point, so that its proper course may be thereby determined. Then let Him speak the Word of Israel's Will, so that all Israel with united energy, disciplined and directed, may move as one man irresistibly to fulfil its Destiny.

Such action will induce a complementary current in every other racial and religious section of humanity. The Chinaman who has given up politeness, filial reverence, and philosophy for European ideas; the Russian who has bartered mystic melancholy for Marxism; the Mohammedan who has been taught to despise the faith, virtue, virility, and valour of his forebears, and to appreciate cocktails, cocottes, pork, and profanity; all these are hybrids, all these are self-mutilated cowards, garbage of self-surrender. They are monsters bred of the shame of being different to other people. The modern Italian has discarded the noble and beautiful toga for shoddy city clothes. The Mongol's sweeping silken robes are gone; dignified in them, he prefers to look ridiculous in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of a Bermondsey bank clerk. The Hindoo, once clean and comfortable in cotton cloths, sweats and stinks in starched shirts and shabby suits in the hope of looking like a Sahib. Mongrels and monsters, all these! Diverse as they are, they are born of one mother, Conventionality, by one father, Shame.

Let the Jew lead the way! Let the Jew find himself and be sure of himself; let him assert himself without fear of others, or reference to their ideals and standards. They will be forced to respect him. In self-defence, each one will find for himself the formula of his own function. From that moment the friction between the various parts of the human machine will begin to diminish.

"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." The social and economical crises of today are not due to over-population, to lack of supplies, or to inefficiency. They are due to the suppression of individuality. Instead of each person and each race doing its own will, the whole of humanity is being thrown into a melting-pot; the only ambition is to get to the top. The earth affords infinite scope for each soul, as the sky affords scope for each star. But instead of each soul seeking the satisfaction proper to itself, it is persuaded by the popular Press, by the pressure of public opinion, and by the contagious delusion of Democracy, that nothing is worth having save wealth in its grossest interpretation, "modern conveniences" in the crudest sense of the term, and social success in its silliest and shallowest shape. Pleasure itself is prescribed, like the diet of a diabetic. Respect is inseparable from envy, since the superiority of one is incompatible with the equivalent superiority of others. Formerly, Virgil and Horace could admire each other's qualities. Today, they must be measured by the balances at their banks. There are not enough automobiles and diamonds to go round, any more than there were in the time of Buddha or Villon. But the ascetic Prince and the starving scholar could each be unique and supreme without struggling for shekels.

The Jew has no claim to consideration on account of his success in money- getting. Every race in the world can produce rivals in that art. The True Spirit of Israel shines in the splendour of its literature, and in such moral qualities as that rigorous sense of Reality which made him the torch-bearer of Science through the Dark Ages, in the persistent patience which preserved his racial peculiarities through proscription and persecution, in the fidelity to tradition which kept him true to himself until he was assimilated in the American ant-heap, where no animal can live except the aimlessly active insects that swarm in its mould.

To recapitulate, Israel has not evolved a true consciousness of racial destiny through the ages, for "The word of Sin is Restriction," and the sin of Israel is this, that is has never know itself, or done its will.

Love is the law, love under will.

William S. Burroughs, June 25,1986 (Paranormal, Synchronicity, Dreams)

Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences by Arzy Shahar and Moshe Idel (PDF)

In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observations and modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self.

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Techniques of Consciousness Change by Robert Anton Wilson

The possibility of changing consciousness was discovered in the Orient 2500 years ago, at least. Techniques were discovered to quiet the mind, pacify the mind, remove emotional compulsions. These were organized into the science of Yoga. As John Lilly says, “Yoga is the science of the East. Science is the Yoga of the West.”

Science is a yoga, too. Science is a way of trying to reach an objective level in which your emotional compulsions and prejudices aren’t twisting all the facts to fit in with your reality tunnel.

The scientific worldview grew up in the west between 1500 and 1750, largely due to mystics who were known as Hermeticists. This Hermetic scientific revolution saw theology as its enemy, and there was no conflict between Hermeticism and science. They were both based on experiment, find out what happens if you “do this,” and they were both opposed to the authority of the Church.

Shortly after 1600 this began to split, and this Hermetic tradition faded into the background, and we developed for the first time in history a science that had absolutely no connection to anything except pure reason. The hermetic tradition was that there is no such thing as pure reason, you have to first work on your own perceiving apparatus to correct your prejudices, and the scientist is not separate from what the scientist observes.

The general yogic attitude, “you are the master that makes the grass green,” –western science lost that insight, and from Newton onwards we have the idea that it doesn’t matter who you are, if you follow scientific procedure you’ll find the truth.

This began to break down after 1900, due to Sigmund Freud, who pointed out that even scientists, they’re human beings, they may have neurosis, and they may have elaborate rationalizations for neurosis. The influence of Karl Marx also pointed out that no matter what you’re theorizing about it’s a mirror of your economic status.

Anthropologists started coming back with reports of alternative reality tunnels, and that no matter what reality tunnel you live in, the world will organize itself in your perception to be compatible with that reality tunnel.

So, science began to have data to look at science itself critically. That’s how intelligence increases, when intelligence looks at intelligence and criticizes intelligence. So we got to the point where we could look at science and say, “science is the product of people!”

People are doing this, and their prejudices are getting into it. It’s not just enough to say you will be objective, you’ve got to learn to change yourself from the inside out before you can even approximate towards objectivity.

When Albert Hoffman, after accidentally ingesting LSD, when through a profound experience… It took him 40 years to figure out what LSD meant. In 1982 he wrote an essay in which he said, “There is no objective reality separate from us.”

This became obvious to others due to quantum physics. Physicists discovered that the atomic world is just not describable in terms of Aristotilean logic. You can’t describe anything on the quantum level accurately unless you include the observer in your picture. So quantum physics turned out to be saying exactly the same thing as the psychedelic revolution was saying: that there is no objective reality separate from us, all we know is the reality that we are co-creators of. The reality perceived, conceived and put together by our nervous systems.

At this point it becomes obvious that intelligence can be raised, consciousness can be altered, all we have to do is learn how to change our nervous system and we can go to wider and wider reality tunnels, and bigger and bigger levels of perception.

Nobody has made pranayama illegal yet because it is impossible to enforce. You just have to read a book on yoga, learn how to breath, and you find you go into an entirely different consciousness state. Then you go back into your ordinary consciousness, think about that state, then go back into that state and think about ordinary consciousness. Already you’re in I- squared, you’re finding out how your nervous system works.

We are moving more and more to the place where we can change our nervous system, change our reality tunnels. Once you look down on your reality tunnel, whether Methodist, Jewish, hippy, capitalist, or Iranian Muslim fundamentalist… you can compare reality tunnels, and then you’re on a higher level of intelligence already. Because you’re no longer a conditioned mechanism just following the reality tunnel that was accidentally imprinted or conditioned, and you can start choosing between reality tunnels.

Initiations and Initiates in Tibet by Alexandra David Neel (ePUB, MOBI, AZW Reader)

Nestled amid the high peaks and eternal snows of the Himalayas and other mountain ranges, Tibet is home to a centuries-old Buddhist tradition, rich in mystic rites and rituals aimed at helping adherents achieve spiritual bliss. In this fascinating volume, a noted authority delves into the nature and sources of Tibetan mysticism, providing readers with a wealth of information regarding Lamaic rites of initiation and the teachings given to initiates, both during and after the initiation ceremonies.

The author first defines Tibetan mysticism and examines the role of the spiritual guide and the choice of a master. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of the esoteric doctrines and traditional oral instruction. Madame David-Neel then recounts in detail the various kinds of initiations and their aims, including initiations with and without “activity,” the “Mani” initiation, and the different meanings of Aum mani padme hum! Also covered are the magic rites known as dubthabs, the “gymnastics” of respiration, daily spiritual exercises, the contemplation of sun and sky, the dalai lamas, different kinds of morality, and many other topics.

Alexandra David-Neel was a historian of religion and a resident of Tibet for 14 years. As a practicing Buddhist, she participated in many of the spiritual rites and practices described in this book, which gives her account a special immediacy and authenticity. Lucid, objective, and highly readable, Initiations and Initiates in Tibet is a treasury of fact and lore offering valuable insights and information to students of religion and Tibetan Buddhism in particular.

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Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David Neel (ePUB, MOBI, AZW Reader)

For centuries Tibet has been known as the last home of mystery, the hidden, sealed land, where ancient mysteries still survive that have perished in the rest of the Orient. Many men have written about Tibet and its secret lore, but few have actually penetrated it to learn its ancient wisdom. Among those few was Madame Alexandra David-Neel, a French orientalist. A practicing Buddhist, a profound historian of religion, and linguist, she actually lived in Tibet for more than 14 years. She had the great honor of being received by the Dalai Lama; she studied philosophical Buddhism and Tibetan Tantra at the great centers; she meditated in lonely caves and on wind-swept winter mountains with yogi hermits; and she even witnessed forbidden corpse-magic in the forests. Her experiences have been unique.

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The Greatest Fake Religion of All Time

Over fifty years ago, a group of pranksters founded a satiric religion devoted to creating conspiracy theories so insane that nobody would ever believe uncritically in conspiracies again. They called themselves the Discordians. And their weird ideas are still influencing us today.

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The Holy Spirit as Feminine: Early Christian Testimonies and Their Interpretation by Johannes van Oort

The earliest Christians—all of whom were Jews—spoke of the Holy Spirit as a feminine figure. The present article discusses the main proof texts, spanning the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’ to a number of testimonies from the second century. The ancient tradition was, in particular, kept alive in East and West Syria, up to and including the fourth century Makarios/Symeon, who even influenced ‘modern’ Protestants such as John Wesley and the Moravian leader Count von Zinzendorf. It is concluded that, in the image of the Holy Spirit as woman and mother, one may attain a better appreciation of the fullness of the Divine.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky & Marianne Costa ::: The Way of the Tarot

Filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s insights into the Tarot as a spiritual path.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s profound study of the Tarot, which began in the early 1950s, reveals it to be far more than a simple divination system. The Tarot is first and foremost a powerful instrument of self-knowledge and a representation of the structure of the soul.

The Way of Tarot shows that the entire deck is structured like a temple, or a mandala, which is both an image of the world and a representation of the divine. The authors use the sacred art of the original Marseille Tarot--created during a time of religious tolerance in the 11th century--to reconnect with the roots of the Tarot’s Western esoteric wisdom. They explain that the Tarot is a “nomadic cathedral” whose parts--the 78 cards or “arcana”--should always be viewed with an awareness of the whole structure. This understanding is essential to fully grasp the Tarot’s hermetic symbolism.

The authors explore the secret associations behind the hierarchy of the cards and the correspondences between the suits and energies within human beings. Each description of  the Major Arcana includes key word summaries, symbolic meanings, traditional interpretations, and a section where the card speaks for itself. Jodorowsky and Costa then take the art of reading the Tarot to a depth never before possible. Using their work with Tarology, a new psychological approach that uses the symbolism and optical language of the Tarot to create a mirror image of the personality, they offer a powerful tool or self-realization, creativity, and healing.

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY is a filmmaker who made the legendary El Topo and The Holy Mountain. He also is a psychotherapist and author of many books on Tarot and spiritualism, including Psychomagic and The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky. MARIANNE COSTA has worked with Jodorowsky since 1997, coteaching workshops on Tarot and family-tree therapy. She is the author of No Woman’s Land. Both authors live in Paris.

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A.C. Dying

'AC Dying' by Lady Frieda Harris

"He analysed God, saw that every man had made God in his own image, saw the savage and cannibal Jews devoted to a savage and cannibal God, who commanded the rape of virgins and the murder of little children. He saw the timid inhabitants of India, races continually the prey of every robber tribe, inventing the effeminate Vishnu; while, under the same name, their conquerors worshiped a warrior, the conqueror of Demon Swans. He saw the flower of earth throughout all time, the gracious Greeks, what gracious gods they had invented. He saw Rome, in its strength devoted to Mars, Jupiter and Hercules, in its decay turning to emasculate Attis, slain Adonis, murdered Osiris, crucified Christ. He could even trace in his own life every aspiration, every devotion, as a reflection of his physical and intellectual needs. He saw, too, the folly of all this supernaturalism. He heard the Boers and the British pray to the same Protestant God, and it occurred to him that the early success of the former might be due rather to superior valour than to superior praying power, and their eventual defeat to the circumstance that they could only bring 60,000 men against a quarter of a million. He saw, too, the face of humanity mired in its own blood that dripped from the leeches of religion fastened to its temples." - Aleister Crowley

The Dangers of Mysticism by Aleister Crowley

Affectionately inscribed to Arthur Edward Waite

A CURIOUS IDEA is being sedulously disseminated, and appears to be gaining ground, that mysticism is the "Safe" Path to the Highest, and magic the dangerous Path to the Lowest.

There are several comments to be made on this assertion. One may doubt whether anything worth doing at all is free from danger, and one may wonder what danger can threaten the man whose object is his own utter ruin. One may also smile a little grimly at the integrity of those who try to include all Magic under Black Magic, as is the present trick of the Mystic Militant here on earth.

Now, as one who may claim to a slight acquaintance with the literature of both paths, and to have been honoured by personal exposition from the adepts of both paths, I believe that I may be able to bring them fairly into the balance.

This is the magical theory, that the first departure from the Infinite must be equilibrated and so corrected. So the "great magician," Mayan, the maker of Illusion, the Creator, must be met in combat. Then "if Satan be divided against Satan, how shall his kingdom stand?" Both vanish: the illusion is no more. Mathematically, 1 + (-1) = 0. And this path is symbolised in the Taro under the figure of the Magus, the card numbered 1, the first departure from 0, but referred to Beth, 2, Mercury, the god of Wisdom, Magic and Truth.

And this Magus has the twofold aspect of the Magician himself and also of the "Great Magician" described in Liber 418 (Equinox, No. V., Special Supplement, p. 144).

Now the formula of the mystic is much simpler. Mathematically, it is 1 - 1 = 0. He is like a grain of salt cast into the sea; the process of dissolution is obviously easier than the shock of worlds which the magician contemplates. "Sit down, and feel yourself as dust in the presence of God; nay, as less than dust, as nothing," is the all-sufficient simplicity of his method. Unfortunately, many people cannot do this. And when you urge your inability, the mystic is only too likely to shrug his shoulders and be done with you.

This path is symbolised by the "Fool" of the Tarot, who is alike the Mystic and the Infinite.

But apart from this question, it is by no means certain that the formula is as simple as it seems. How is the mystic to assure himself that "God" is really "God" and not some demon masquerading in His image? We find Gerson sacrificing Huss to his "God"; we find a modern journalist who has done more than dabble in mysticism writing, "This mystic life at its highest is undeniably selfish"; we find another writing like the old lady who ended her criticism of the Universe, "There's only Jock an' me'll be saved; an' I'm no that sure o' Jock"; we find another who at the age of ninety-nine foams at the mouth over an alleged breach of her alleged copyright; we find another so sensitive that the mention of his name by the present writer induces an attack of epileptic mania; if such are really "united with" or "absorbed in" God, what of God?

We are told in Galations that the fruits of the Spirit are peace, love, joy, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperence; and somewhere else, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Of these evil-doers then we must either think that they are dishonest, and have never attained at all, or that they have united themselves with a devil. Such are "Brethren of the Left Hand Path," described so thoroughly in Liber 418 (Equinox, No. V., Special Supplement, pp. 119 sqq.).

Of these the most characteristic sign is their exclusiveness. "We are the men." "Ours is the only Way." "All Buddhists are wicked," the insanity of spiritual pride.

The Magician is not nearly so liable to fall into this fearful mire of pride as the mystic; he is occupied with things outside himself, and can correct his pride. Indeed, he is constantly being corrected by Nature. He, the Great One, cannot run a mile in four minutes! The mystic is solitary and shut up, lacks wholesome combat. We are all schoolboys, and the football field is a perfect prophylactic of swelled head. When the mystic meets an obstacle, he "makes believe" about it. He says it is "only illusion." He has the morphino-maniac's feeling of bien-être, the delusions of the general paralytic. He loses the power of looking any fact in the face; he feeds himself on his own imagination; he persuades himself of his own attainment. If contradicted on the subject, he is cross and spiteful and cattish. If I criticise Mr X, he screams, and tries to injure me behind my back; if I say that Madame Y is not exactly St Teresa, she writes a book to prove that she is.

Such persons "swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread," as Milton wrote of a less dangerous set of spiritual guides.

For their unhappy followers and imitators, no words of pity suffice. The whole universe is for them but "the glass of their fool's face"; only, unlike Sir Palamedes, they admire it. Moral and spiritual Narcissi, they perish in the waters of illusion. A friend of mine, a solicitor in Naples, has told me strange tales of where such self-adoration ends.

And the subtlety of the devil is shown particularly in the method by which neophytes are caught by the Black Brothers. There is an exaggerated awe, a solemnity of diction, a vanity of archaic phrases, a false veil of holiness upon the unclean shrine. Stilted affectation masquerades as dignity; a rag-bag of mediævalism apes profundity; jargon passes for literature; phylacteries increase about the hem of the perfect prig, prude, and Pharisee.

Corollary to this attitude is the lack of all human virtue. The greatest magician, when he acts in his human capacity, acts as a man should. In particular, he has learnt kind-heartedness and sympathy. Unselfishness is very often his long suit. Just this the mystic lacks. Trying to absorb the lower planes into the higher, he neglects the lower, a mistake no magician could make.

The Nun Gertrude, when it came to her turn to wash up the dishes, used to explain that she was very sorry, but at that particular moment she was being married, with full choral service, to the Saviour.

Hundreds of mystics shut themselves up completely and for ever. Not only is their wealth-producing capacity lost to society, but so is their love and good-will, and worst of all, so is their example and precept. Christ, at the height of his career, found time to wash the feet of his disciples; any Master who does not do this on every plane is a Black Brother. The Hindus honor no man who becomes "Sannyasi" (nearly our "hermit") until he has faithfully fulfilled all his duties as a man and a citizen. Celibacy is immoral, and the celibate shirks one of the greatest difficulties of the Path.

Beware of all those who shirk the lower difficulties: it's a good bet that they shirk the higher difficulties too.

Of the special dangers of the path there is here no space to write; each student finds at each step temptations reflecting his own special weakness. I have therefore dealt solely with the dangers inseparable from the path itself, dangers inherent in its nature. Not for one moment would I ask the weakest to turn back or turn aside from that path, but I would ask even the strongest to apply these correctives: first, the skeptical or scientific attitude, both in outlook and method; second, a healthy life, meaning by that what the athlete and the explorer mean; third, hearty human companionship, and devotion to life, work, and duty.

Let him remember that an ounce of honest pride is better than a ton of false humility, although an ounce of true humility is worth an ounce of honest pride; the man who works has no time to bother with either. And let him remember Christ's statement of the Law "to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself."

A Lecture on the Philosophy of Magick By Aleister Crowley

[Ed. note: Richard Kaczynski, a serious student of Crowley's unpublished work who recently completed his biography of Crowley, obtained this lecture from Christina Foyle, a member of the English bookdealing family renowned for her leterary luncheon lectures. Her family's London shop remaindered Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice. He noted in his diary for August 17, 1932 "Saw Foyle - asked to speak at lunch Sept. 15 on "The Philosophy of Magick." His hope was, as he wrote an aquaintance a few days later, "to sell a few hundred sets of my treatise Magick." Christina Foyle told Kaczynski that she arranged the luncheon at Grosvenor House even though many people warned her off because of Crowley's reputation (her usual fare was Auden, Eliot et al.). One attendee, Rode Macaulay, remarked "I don't mind what he does, as long as he doesn't turn himself into a goat." Crowley's diary for Sept. 15, the day of the luncheon, records "Made a good speech!!!!!" - HB]

I am sorry if I am not as frivolous as might be required by the exigencies of the occasion, but Magick is a very serious subject, and I have a very serious message to bring you. It is very little understood what Magick is. It is connected in the minds of some people with conjuring. In the minds of others it is connected with charlatanism. I want to tell you that Magick has been since the very earliest ages of humanity the tradition of the wise men. I want to tell you what the essential doctrine of the magician is with regard to man's place in the universe and that it is given in The Book of the Law that every man and every woman is a star. What is a star? Philosophers have always agreed about one thing - that is that the Universe to be intelligible at all must be considered as one and homogeneous. Therefore you can understand the position of the mystic who says that each of us is a member of the body of God. You can understand what is written in the Bible, "your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost." It is upon these postulates that the general theory of Magick is founded.

Why should this be so? We are all agreed, no doubt, that everything that happens is in some philosophical sense a necessary happening. Let us consider the adventures of an atom of oxygen. That atom of oxygen is not different from any other atom of oxygen in itself. For it is identical in the same sense that we are all of us identical. The question is - why alter that state? Why descend from the absolute to the material? And the answer is that we will suppose the atom of oxygen is self-conscious and becomes aware of this possibility only by entering into combination with all other atoms. Nothing in making that combination can destroy the oxygen. The oxygen will remain oxygen and can be extracted as oxygen, but in the process of combination it has got experience and the magical theory of the Universe is that we have all come to the particular star or planet we hapen to be living on in order to get experience. We all go through stages in that experience. Some of those stages are pleasant and some rather unpleasant, but they are all necessary in order that we may obtain the full comprehension of ourselves.

This is the reconciliation in the magical theory between freewill and destiny. It is true, as the determinist has told us, that our actions are all automatic - that we are no more capable of thinking original thoughts or performing original and willed actions than any other piece of machinery. That is the doctrine of the materialist. And we say, "Yes, very good, but who invented this machinery?" And the answer is, "We ourselves. Each one of us." We are in the middle of a world crisis. It is a very good world crisis - better than any crisis we have had before and there is no man alive with an intellect big enough to grasp the threads of the problems which confront the world today. There are two ways out of that. Either consult a superior intelligence which Magick shows you the way of doing, or you can develop your own mind, for it has a faculty which is as superior to the intellect as the intellect is superior to the emotions.

All magical operations require a very elaborate training of one kind or another, but I think the only way out is that we have got to put men in charge of this planet who are really more than men. We must get back to the times of the prophets or we must make ourselves prophets. And we must look at world problems from a standpoint which is entirely alien to that existing at present.

Carl Jung - Shadow Projection

The West's "Ardent" Feminists Abandon Women to the Caliph

The hypocrisy of the left cannot possibly be more visible than when it comes to the treatment of women in much of the Islamic world.

Not a word has been uttered by feminists in the face of the horrible mistreatment of captured women by ISIS and other Islamist groups.

After attacking a village, the Islamic State splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness.

The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold.

There is a hierarchy: sheikhs get first choice, then emirs, then fighters. They often take three or four girls each and keep them for a month or so, until they grow tired of a girl, when she goes back to market. At slave auctions, buyers haggle fiercely, driving down prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unattractive. We heard about one girl who was traded 22 times, and another, who had escaped, told us that the sheikh who had captured her wrote his name on the back of her hand to show that she was his "property.’”

This is an excerpt from the testimony of Zainab Bangura, the UN representative for sexual crimes in war, who denounced the atrocities of the Islamic state.

In the hands of Islamic State there are now 5,000 women, mostly belonging to the Yazidi syncretistic minority. If you change country and go to Nigeria, the situation is the same. Now it is the turn of “Chibok girls” who unleashed Twitter’s mobilization of the first lady, Michelle Obama. Most of these girls have been raped and are now pregnant.

Even the corrupt United Nations has spoken, while the Western feminists keep silent. This is the revolting double standard of Western feminists, who are always ready to denounce the “homophobic” Christians, sexism on the US campus or the Israeli Ahava beauty creams.

These feminists have been busy the past few months fighting for the Irish referendum which just approved gay marriage, while treating as heretics, criminals and sexual predators all who opposed it. Feminists are also very busy in Israel in demonizing the traditional Orthodox Jewish families. Regardless of how you feel about gay marriage the new McCarthyism imposed on all of society by the left states that no counter opinions are tolerable and certainly the fate of women at the hand of ISIS can just be ignored.

In the words of the feminist Rebecca Brink Vipond, “I won’t take the bait of a patronizing call for feminists to set aside their goals in America to address problems in Muslim theocracies”.

Many will remember how these feminists abandoned Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch-Somali dissident of Islam, to her own defenses. A lone voice in the wilderness has continued to be Professor Phyllis Chesler, who is courageous enough to speak out and decry the hypocrisy of her fellow liberal feminists.

For these so very liberal females, it is much more comfortable to focus on hymens in California. With their defeatist multicultural relativism, they have been unable to utter one word on behalf of the Yazidi young women, the unfortunate blonde girls in the hands of the genocidal Caliph.

Cults and Conspiracies from Diana to Obama by Melanie Phillips

Excerpt from her book 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power' which you can buy here: http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Turned-Upside-Down/dp/1594035741

In America, there are an estimated 2,500 cults involving between 3 and 10 million people. Their techniques of mind control are many and various. They include food and sleep deprivation; trance induction through hypnosis or prolonged rhythmical chanting; and “love bombing,” where cult members are bombarded with conditional love, which is removed whenever there is a deviation from the dictates of the leader.

Such cults often promote bizarre theories about conspiracies by agents of the modern world or by extraterrestrial forces. These theories cross political divides, linking neofascist, New Age, Islamist and green groups. Millions of people—including many who wouldn’t have anything to do with any cult—now appear only too eager to believe that the world is controlled by dark conspiracies of covert forces for which there is not one shred of evidence. Once, such theories would have been seen as indications of extreme eccentricity. Now, growing numbers of people treat them as legitimate subjects for debate, creating an infectious kind of public hysteria.

Examples of these conspiracy theories include the notion that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory, that Princess Diana was murdered to prevent her from marrying a Muslim, and that the 9/11 attack on New York was orchestrated by the Bush administration, in some versions (particularly popular in the Muslim world) aided and abetted by the Israeli Mossad. These notions are all advanced in press articles or in television documentaries as hypotheses to be seriously entertained. The ninety-minute documentary Loose Change, which posits the 9/11 conspiracy theory, was shown on television in the United States and the UK, and was discussed as if it presented a reasonable hypothesis. Although the film was denounced in some quarters as risible, its thesis is believed by a significant number of people and has generated what is known as the “Truther” movement. According to opinion polls, more than a third of Americans suspect that federal officials either facilitated the 9/11 attacks or knew they were imminent but did nothing to stop them, so the government would have a pretext for going to war in the Middle East.[1]

Similarly, thousands of people apparently believe that Princess Diana was murdered at the hands of a conspiracy involving the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and MI5. The overwhelming evidence that she died because she was not wearing a seat belt when her drunken chauffeur crashed while speeding through a Paris tunnel did not prevent British public opinion from forcing a three-year investigation followed by a long-drawn-out inquest at enormous public expense—all to test out a conspiracy theory that belongs to the realm of fantasy.

On a steadily enlarging fringe, fevered discussions of UFOs, aliens and mind control veer into allegations of conspiracies by hidden elites in the Bilderberg Group of foreign affairs specialists or the Rothschild banking firm, heavily laden with antisemitic paranoia about the alleged sinister power of the Jews.

Books by David Icke, the former soccer player and TV sports presenter who has announced that he is “the son of God,” are bestsellers advancing a mixture of New Age philosophy and apocalyptic conspiracy theory. In these, he argues that Britain will be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes, and that the world is ruled by a secret group called the “Global Elite” or “Illuminati,” which was responsible for the Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11, and which he has linked to the iconic text of Jewish conspiracy theory, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—despite the fact that this was a hoax fabricated by the tsarist secret police at the turn of the twentieth century. Icke has said he is guided by beings on “higher levels” to make such information available to the public.[2]

Meanwhile the forces in the U.S. citizens’ militia movement that were indeed responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing are themselves fueled by similar paranoid conspiracy theories involving hidden elites, secret societies and international organizations and plots featuring everything from UFOs to gun control, Freemasonry to AIDS.

The postreligious Western world is struggling to adjust to a profound loss of moral and philosophical moorings. A consequence of this radical discombobulation is widespread moral, emotional and intellectual chaos, resulting in shattered and lonely lives, emotional incontinence and gullibility to fraud and charlatanry. There is an increasing tendency to live in a fantasy world where irrational beliefs in myths are thought to restore order to chaotic lives, and where psychological projection creates the comforting illusion of control.

In the Western world, there have been two notable instances of this mythmaking in recent years. The first was the fantasy woven around the personality of the late Princess Diana, and the extraordinary passions unleashed by her untimely demise in the Alma tunnel in Paris. It was only with the death of the “People’s Princess” that the extent of Britain’s transformation—from a country of reason, intelligence, stoicism, self-restraint and responsibility into a land of credulousness, sentimentality, emotional excess, irresponsibility and self-obsession—became shatteringly apparent.

Princess Diana was an icon of the new Britain because she embodied the latter characteristics. In a country where epidemic family breakdown and mass fatherlessness testified to a society oblivious to the lethal downside of its culture of instant gratification, Princess Diana—herself the product of a family broken by divorce, a pattern she then replicated in her own marriage breakdown—became a symbol of dysfunctionality redeemed. Her bulimia and the story of her apparent unhappiness with a purportedly cold and unfaithful husband and an unfeeling and callous royal family confirmed her as the national emblem of victimhood. But she was also beautiful and rich, a fashion icon and a future Queen of England. And in her reported stand against the supposedly remote, rigid and repressed royals, she stood for “real” values such as love and kindness. So she became a mythic personality onto whom the public projected the fantasy that she was just like them in the chaos of her personal life but had transcended it all to become a near-sainted figure, laying her hands upon AIDS sufferers or campaigning emotionally against land mines.

It was all rubbish, of course. No one actually knew what she was really like; people just thought they did. Only later did her deeply disturbed, manipulative and selfish behavior become apparent. But since people were unable to distinguish between the true and the ersatz, her death unleashed an orgy of sentimentality. People sobbed in the streets and buried the gates of Kensington Palace, where the Princess had lived, under mountains of cellophane-wrapped bouquets. Indeed, reaction to the death took an explicitly religious form: the shrines of flowers, the praying, the hushed and reverent atmosphere.

This was all vicarious feeling, however. In postreligious Britain, it was devotion at a distance by people who no longer possessed what they still deeply longed for—belief in something beyond themselves, and emotional health and support. It was kitsch emotion over someone they had never known; grief for the death of an imagined personality, which sanctified the elevation of feeling, image and spontaneity over reason, reality and restraint.

Feelings were associated with being a nice and good person, while restraint was seen as evidence of callousness. But feelings were deemed to exist only if they were visible. Tears were good; stiff upper lips were bad. Accordingly, people carried their mourning bouquets like badges of moral worth. The Queen and the Prince of Wales, by contrast, were judged to be cold and heartless because they weren’t weeping or emoting. The scene threatened to become ugly when the public turned savagely against the Queen for failing to fly the Union Flag at half-mast over Buckingham Palace and were mollified only when the monarch, alerted to the dangerous public mood, allowed the people to see how deeply the family had been affected by the tragedy.

This “Dianafication” of the culture is essentially empty, amoral, untruthful and manipulative; eventually people see through it and realize they have been played for suckers. But while the mood lasts—and it can last long enough to create presidents and prime ministers—reason doesn’t have a chance. Warm, fuzzy feelings win hands down because they anaesthetize us to reality and blank out those issues that require difficult decisions. This disorder raises up political icons who achieve instantaneous and unshakeable mass followings of adoring acolytes because they permit the public to suspend judgment and avoid making any hard choices, indulging instead in fantasies of turning swords into ploughshares.

The second conspicuous example of postreligious mythology was the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States—although buyers’ remorse and disillusionment appeared to set in within a few months of his inauguration and soon threatened to swamp his period of office altogether. Obama came to power as a mythic figure, like Princess Diana, who seemed to sublimate and transcend the public’s various cultural traumas. By virtue of the fact that he was half black, he allowed people to fantasize that he would both redeem America’s shameful history of slavery and racial prejudice and bring peace to the world. After all, did he not embody in his own history a fusion of black and white, Muslim and Christian?

Brushed aside were highly troubling details of his personal history: his ambivalence about his fractured identity, his efforts to conceal or misrepresent crucial details about his background, and a pattern of unsavory or radical associations. The fact that his pre-election statements were intellectually and politically incoherent, frighteningly naive or patently contradictory was of no consequence. In his personal story and troubled family background, people imagined they could see someone who had overcome adversity by force of character. Like Princess Diana, he appeared to have emerged from this troubled past committed to spreading peace, love and reconciliation. Instead of waging war, he would bring harmony simply through his personality, charisma and will.

Reason was suspended for the duration; emotion and sentimentality took over. People didn’t want to hear about the anti-white, anti-Western church to which he had belonged for twenty years, nor about his questionable associations with people in Chicago’s corrupt political machine, nor about his friendships with and tutelage by anti-Western radicals. The appeal of the myth he embodied, with its capacity to redeem America, was simply too strong.

After all, the American public had just endured the global ignominy of a president—the embodiment of their nation—who was reviled as a cretinous, bigoted, warmongering, inarticulate, gauche and incompetent cowboy. In Barack Obama, by contrast, they had a political rock star, a global icon and the epitome of cool by virtue of his handsomeness, elegance, laid-back thoughtfulness, apparent intelligence, blessed articulacy (they ignored the teleprompters) and charisma. And he was black to boot. And so by electing him to the presidency they were redeeming both America and themselves, upon whom his reflected glory would shine, illuminating the virtue of those who had the moral clarity and insight to vote for him. Aghast at the murderous and apparently hopeless complexities of defending America against the Islamic jihad, they were seduced by his promise that the exercise of reason would bring an end to conflict. He made them feel good about themselves; he stood for hope, love, reconciliation, youthfulness and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Obama himself did nothing to dispel this impression. He suggested that he would win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was going to break the deadlock in the Middle East. He would change the climate (literally). When he won the Democratic Party nomination, he declared that this would be seen as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” [3]

Presented with this absurd display of hubris and narcissism, Americans reacted by junking rationality altogether and elevating Obama not just to the presidency but to divinity. Early in the election campaign, Oprah Winfrey proclaimed Obama to be “the one. He is the one!” [4] She herself was likened to “John the Baptist, leading the way for Obama to win.” [5] A poll taken in January 2009 just before his inauguration found that his popularity was greater than that of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. [6] According to Susan Sarandon, “He is a community organizer like Jesus was, and now we’re a community and he can organize us.” [7] A Chicago art student, David Cordero, made a papier-mâché figure of Obama as Jesus, complete with blue neon halo, titled “Blessing.” Cordero explained: “All of this is a response to what I’ve been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins.” [8] And after Obama’s speech in Cairo in June 2009 reaching out to Muslims, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas declared on MSNBC: “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world, he’s sort of God.” [9] The Norwegian Nobel Committee appeared to agree. In October 2009, it caused almost universal astonishment and derision by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama for having “created a new climate in international politics,” even though he had not achieved any perceptible advance towards peace anywhere in the world. [10]

The urge to impose some artificial order through myth and fantasy is not confined to the “Princess Obama” syndrome. The climate of unreason has also profoundly affected attitudes on the big issues of the day. Obviously, there are always differences of opinion and interpretation in which one side of an argument will think the beliefs of the other side are false. What is notable about some of today’s debates is the extent to which it has become all but impossible for factual evidence to make any contribution, with pre-existing assumptions framing the discussion and permitting no deviation. Facts are simply ignored as if they didn’t exist, or denied on the grounds that those who bring them forward are either evil or deranged. What follows is a brief examination of four deeply controversial issues from which evidence, reason and logic have been exiled in favor of irrationality, ideology and prejudice—issues on which much of the Western mind has been closed tightly shut.

Notes:
1 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, January 8, 2006, http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
2 David Icke, The Robots’ Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance, cited in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2003), pp. 29–92.
3 Text of Barack Obama’s victory speech, June 3, 2008, Associated Press, http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D912VD200&show_article=1
4 New York Daily News, December 10, 2007.
5 New York Times, December 9, 2007.
6 Christianity Today, February 22, 2009.
7 The Hill, January 21, 2009, http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/stars-heap-praise-on-obama-2009-01-21.html
8 MSNBC, April 3, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/ 17927102/
9 Newsbusters, June 5, 2009, http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/06/05/newsweek-s-evan-thomas-obama-sort-god
10 Norwegian Nobel Committee, citation for Nobel Peace Prize 2009, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

145 Intellectuals Agree: Dead Cartoonists Aren't Worthy of Free-Speech Award if Their Murderers Come From a Disadvantaged Minority

Sunday brought the story of six members of PEN America, citing impressively asinine and ill-informed arguments, protesting that a free-speech organization was giving a courage-in-free-speech award to Charlie Hebdo, the French cartoon newspaper that was massacred for its courageous free speech. Now comes the chaser: A full 145 members of PEN, including some of the original refuseniks (and some other names you might recognize, such as Joyce Carol Oates), have attached their name to a remarkable document that encapsulates as well as anything I have seen the sick cloud that hangs over the Enlightenment idea of free speech.

Read more...

The Stele of Revealing

Front:
The deceased, the prophet of Mentu, lord of Thebes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, true-of-voice, says: "O sublime one! I adore the greatness of your spirits, o formidable soul, who inspires terror of himself among the gods. Appearing on his great throne, he travels the path of the soul, of the spirit, and of the body, having received the light, being equipped, I have made my path towards the place in which Ra, Tum, Khephra, and Hathor are; I, the deceased priest of Mentu, lord of Thebes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, son of a person of the same rank, Bes-n-Maut, and of the priestess of Amoun-Ra, the mistress of the house Ta-Nech."

Reverse:
The deceased, the prophet of Mentu, lord of Thebes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, true-of-voice, says: "O my heart of my mother, O heart which I had while I was on earth, do not rise up against me in witness, do not oppose me as a judge, do not charge me in the presence of the great god, lord of the West, because I have joined the land to the great West when I was flourishing on earth!" The deceased, priest of Thebes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, true-of-voice, says: "O, you who only has one arm, who shines in the moon, the deceased Ankh-f-n-khonsu has left the multitudes and rejoined those who are in the light, he has opened the dwelling-place of the stars (the Duaut); now then, the deceased Ankh-f-n-khonsu has gone forth by day in order to do everything that pleased him upon earth, among the living."

Aleister Crowley’s Paraphrase of the Hieroglyphs on the Stele of Revealing

Above, the gemmed azure is The naked splendour of Nuit; She bends in ecstasy to kiss The secret ardours of Hadit. The winged globe, the starry blue, Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu! I am the Lord of Thebes, and I The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu; For me unveils the veiled sky, The self-slain Ankh-af-na-khonsu Whose words are truth. I invoke, I greet Thy presence, O Ra-Hoor-Khuit! Unity uttermost showed! I adore the might of Thy breath, Supreme and terrible God, Who makest the gods and death To tremble before Thee: – I, I adore thee! Appear on the throne of Ra! Open the ways of the Khu! Lighten the ways of the Ka! The ways of the Khabs run through To stir me or still me! Aum! let it fill me! The light is mine; its rays consume Me: I have made a secret door Into the House of Ra and Tum, Of Khephra and of Ahathoor. I am thy Theban, O Mentu, The prophet Ankh-af-na-khonsu! By Bes-na-Maut my breast I beat; By wise Ta-Nech I weave my spell. Show thy star-splendour, O Nuit! Bid me within thine House to dwell, O winged snake of light, Hadit! Abide with me, Ra-Hoor-Khuit!

Saith of Mentu the truth-telling brother Who was master of Thebes from his birth: O heart of me, heart of my mother! O heart which I had upon earth! Stand not thou up against me a witness! Oppose me not, judge, in my quest! Accuse me not now of unfitness Before the Great God, the dread Lord of the West! For I fastened the one to the other With a spell for their mystical girth, The earth and the wonderful West, When I flourished, o earth, on thy breast! The dead man Ankh-f-n-khonsu Saith with his voice of truth and calm: O thou that hast a single arm! O thou that glitterest in the moon! I weave thee in the spinning charm; I lure thee with the billowy tune. The dead man Ankh-f-n-khonsu Hath parted from the darkling crowds, Hath joined the dwellers of the light, Opening Duaut, the star-abodes, Their keys receiving. The dead man Ankh-f-n-khonsu Hath made his passage into night, His pleasure on the earth to do Among the living.

Alan Moore on Magic

Enquête Sur Le Monde Invisible

Brilliant documentary documentary by French director Jean-Michel Roux.

In Towns like Hafnarfjörður and Reykjavik, Iceland a large percent of the population believe in elves, ghosts and other paranormal entities. In fact, many claim to have seen them, and some even claim to engage in frequent contact with them. This rare documentary is the first outside look at the strange, but seemingly common events that take place on this small, remote island country.

XXXI Hymns To the Star Goddess Who is Not by XIII: which is ACHAD (Charles Stansfeld Jones)

XXXI HYMNS

TO THE STAR GODDESS

Who is Not

BY XIII: which is ACHAD

I. Invocation

 

Mother of the Sun, Whose Body is White with the Milk of the Stars, bend upon Thy servant and impart unto him Thy Secret Kiss!
Enkindle within him the Holy Ecstasy Thou hast promised unto them that love Thee; the Ecstasy which redeemeth from all pain.
Hast thou not proclaimed: All the sorrows are but shadows, they pass and are done, but there is that which remains? That the Universe is Pure Joy-that Thou givest unimaginable Joys on Earth--that Thou demandest naught in sacrifice?
Let me then rejoice, for therein may I serve Thee most fully. Let it be Thy Joy to see my joy; even as Thou hast promised in Thy Holy Book!
Now, therefore, am I Joyful in Thy Love.
AUMN

II. The Brook

I wandered beside the running stream, and mine eyes caught the glint of Thy Starry Orbs in the swirling waters.
So is it with my mind; it flows on towards the Great Sea of Understanding wherein I may come to know Thee more fully.
Sometimes, as it journeys, it threatens to overflow its banks in its eagerness to reflect a wider image of Thine Infinite Body.
Ah! How the very stones, over which flow the life of my being, thrill at the tender caress of Thy reflected Image.
Thou, too, art Matter; it is I -- Thy Complement -- who am motion! Therefore these very stones are of Thee, but the Spirit -- the Life -- is the very Self of me; mine Inmost Being.
Flow on, O Stream! Flow on, O Life! Towards the Great Sea of Understanding, the Great Mother.

III. The Rose Garden

Long have I lain and waited for Thee in the Rose Garden of Life; yet ever Thou withholdest Thyself from mine Understanding.
As I lay I contemplated Thy nature as that of an Infinite Rose.
Petals, petals, petals.. but where, O Beauteous One, is Thy Heart?
Hast Thou no Heart? Are Thy petals Infinite so that I may never reach the Core of Thy Being?
Yet, Thou hast said: "I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkeness of the innermost sense, desire you: Come unto me!"
Yea! Mine innermost sense is drunken; it is intoxicated upon the Dew of the Rose. Thy Heart is my Heart; there is no difference, O Beloved.
When I shall have penetrated to the Heart of Thine Infinite Rose, there shall I find Myself.
But I shall never come to myself---only to Thee.

IV. The Fox Glove

Tall and straight as a Fox Glove do I stand before Thee, Mother of Heaven.
The flower of my being is given over to a strange conceit; I grow up towards the Stars and not towards the Sun.
Art Thou not Mother of the Sun?
Thus have I blasphemed the Lord and Giver of Life for Thy sake. Yet am I not ashamed, for in forgetting the Sun I am become the Sun--Thy Son--yet a thousand times more Thy Lover.
The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but now I have nowhere to lay my head; for tall and straight as a Fox Glove do I stand before Thee. My resting place is the Womb of the Stars.
Yet all that I may comprehend of Thine Infinite Body is but as the Glove upon one of Thy soft sweet hands, touching the Earth, not hurting the little flowers.

V. The Storm

A Dark Night and the Storm. The lightening flashes between Thee and me. I am dazzled so that I see Thee not.
So in the depths of my being flash the fires of life; they blind me to the Understanding of Thee and Thine Infinite Body of Stars.
Yet I see Thee reflected in the body of her I love, as we lie with quivering limbs awaiting the coming of the sound of thunder.
She fears the thunder, and turns within herself for consolation.
But even there the Lightning flameth, for I have loosed the fires of my being within the dark recess---in honour of the Storm and of Thine Infinite Body which I see not.

VI. The Hole in The Roof

Once I knew an ancient serpent. He delighted to bask in the Sunshine which penetrated through a tiny hole in the roof of the cave.
He was old and very wise.
He said: "Upon me is concentrated the Light of the whole Universe."
But a little brown beetle, who had long lived in the cave with him, looked up, and spreading his wings passed out through the hole in roof---into the Infinite Beyond.
Thus, forsaking wisdom, would I come to Thee, Beloved Lady of the Starry Heavens.

VII. The Design

Strange curves: and every Curve a Number woven into a Musical and Harmonious Pattern.
Such was the design showed me by my friend when first we met.
It was like an exchange of greetings by means of an inward recognition.
Oh! Could I but grasp the Ever-changing Design of Thy Star Body, Mother of Heaven!
Yet, it is written: "Every man and every woman is a star. Every number is infinite, there is no difference."
Such then is Life, for those who love Thee: Strange Curves, and every Curve a Number woven into a Musical and Harmonious Design.

VIII. The Snow Drift

My body was blue as Thine, O Beloved, when they found me. I was stiff as if held in a close embrace. Nor was I conscious of aught but Thee, till the small fires of Earth brought me back with an agony of tingling pain.
How came I to be lost in the snow-drift?
I remember how I had taken shelter from the blinding storm. The snow fell about me, and I waited, turning my thought to Thee.
Then did I realize how every snow-flake is built as a tiny star. I looked closer, burying my face in the white pile, as in Thy Bosom.
Mine arms embraced the snow-drift; I clung to it in a mad ecstacy.
Thus would I have pressed Thy Body to mine, wert Thou not Infinite and I but as tiny as a star-flake.
So was my body frozen---as by the utmost cold of inter-stellar space.
It was blue as Thine when they found me locked in Thine embrace.

IX. Daylight

In the Daylight I see not Thy Body of Stars, O Beloved.
The little light of the Sun veils the Great Light of the Stars, for to-day Thou seemest distant.
The Sun burns like a great Torch, and Earth seems as one of His little Spheres, filled with life.
I am but a tiny spermatozoon, but within me is the fiery and concentrated essence of Life.
Draw me up into Thyself, O Sun! Project me into the Body of Our Lady Nuit!
Thus shall a new Star be born, and I shall see Thee even in the Daylight, O Beloved.

X. The Bird

Once I bought a little bird; his cage was very small; it had only one perch. He was so young he had not even learned to sing, but he chirped gladly when I brought him home.
Then I raised the bars of his cage, and without a moment's hesitation he flew out into the room, and spying the cage of the love-birds, perched upon it and examined it carefully.
Not long afterwards another and stronger cage was obtained for the love-birds, for they had pecked through some of the frail bars. When the little bird was offered the discarded cage, he quickly hopped from his tiny one to theirs.
Now he has three perches and room for his tail, and when we open the door of his cage he refuses to come out. Perhaps he fears to lose what he had once coveted and then obtained.
Herein lies the secret of Government. Give the people what will make them reasonably comfortable; let them have three perches and room for their tails; and forgetting their slavery and restrictions, they will be content.
Hast Thou not said "The slaves shall serve." Lady of the Starry Heaven?

XI. The Moral

There is another moral to the story of the little bird. Having gained his desire for a larger cage, he forgot his longing for Freedom.
The door remained open; the room was before him, wherein he could stretch his wings and fly.
Yet he preferred his cage.
The wide world might have been his had he known how to use it, but he was not ready for that; he would have perished of cold had I let him out into the wintry snow.
Let those who would travel the Mystic Path remember this: Earth Consciousness is an illusion and limitation. When it frets us, like a little cage, our chance for greater freedom comes.
But when a larger cage is offered---when we obtain Dhyana---let us not rest there thinking ourselves free. The door is open, Samadhi lies beyond, and beyond that, when we are ready for it, the Real Freedom, Nirvana.
O Lady of the Stars, let me not content till I penetrate the ultimate bars and am Free---One with the Infinitely Great as with the Infinitely Small.

XII. The Invisible Foot Prints

Long have I roamed the Earth delighting in the Good, the Beautiful and the True; ever seeking the spots where these seem to be most Perfect.
There is joy in this wandering among the flowers of life, but Thy Joy, O Beloved, is to be desired above all.
Now I seek a resting place, I am set upon a new Quest, to Worship at Thy feet.
For it is written of Thee: "Bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, and her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers."
Oh! That I might discover Thine Invisible Footprints upon the Earth and there come to the Understanding of Thy Being, O Beloved.

XIII. The Finger Tips

Or, it may be, O Beloved, I shall discover the imprints of Thy finger tips amid the flowers or upon the Black Earth.
Hath not Nemo a Garden that he tendeth? Doth he not also labour in the Black Earth?
Who knoweth when Thy hands may grasp me and draw me up into Thine arms, there to nestle at Thy breast, to feed upon the Milk of the Stars?
Beloved, verily this tending of the Garden of the World---although the labor may seem heavy---leadeth to a Great Reward. As Thou hast said: "Certainty, not faith, while in life upon death, rest, ecstasy." Nor dost Thou demand aught in sacrifice.
What do the Bhaktis know of Love? They see the Beloved everywhere.
But when I am one with Thee, O Beloved, I shall not see Thee, for I shall know Theee as Thou art.

XIV. The Well of Stars

I know a hidden well of clearest water. Naught but the coping of delicate pink onyx is visible until the secret spring be touched.
Then beware! For above the entrance hangs a fiery sword.
Few find this Well or know its Secret; there are but two roads leading thereto.
From the broad Mountain summit we may search the slopes for a vision of the Woodland Delta where grow the Trees of Eternity, or we may journey through the Valley between the Ivory Hills---if we fear not the purple shadows and the black pit-fall.
From Thee we came; to Thee may we return, O Well of Living Stars!

XV. The Icicles of Isis

It hath been written how the Old King dreamed of his banished peacock, entombed in a palace of ice, who cried: "The Icicles of Isis are falling on my head."
Thus it is with those who are banished to the Palace of the Moon---for the Word of Sin is Restriction.
Oh! Lady of the Starry Heavens, let me not become frozen at the touch of the cold Veil of Isis. For the Moon is but the dead reflector of the Sun, and He but the youngest of Thy Children of Light.
Let me lift Thy Peacock Veil of a Million Starry Eyes, O Beloved!
Show Thy Star Splendour, O Nuit; bid me within Thine house to dwell!

XVI. Purple Mill

The delicate purple mist streams up from the hills: I watch and wait for the meaning of it all.
Sometimes it seems like the incense smoke of Aspiration ascending towards the Sun---giver of Light, Life, Love and Liberty to the Children of Earth.
But the Sun is going down behind the Mountains, and Thy Starry Lamps glow in the Sky.
Is not the Lamp above the Altar a symbol of the Desire of the Higher to draw up the lower to Itself?
So, O Lady of Heaven, I liken the Mist to the life-breath of Souls who pant for Thee here below.
And I remember Thy words:

Above, the gemmed azure is

The naked splendour of Nuit;

She bends in ecstacy to kiss

The secret ardours of Hadit.

The winged globe, the starry blue,

Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

I, too, would ascend as a delicate purple mist that steams up from the Hills. Art Thou not all Pleasure and Purple?

XVII. The Infinite Within

I would that I were as the feminine counterpart of Thee, O Beloved; then would I draw the Infinite within.
Yet since Thy Pure Being must ever be more refined than this body of mine I should interpenetrate every part of Thee with my living flesh.
Thus, O Beloved, should we enter into a new and more complete embrace: not as of earth wherein the male uniteth with the female by means of the physical organs of love, but with every atom of my being close pressed to every atom of Thine---within and without.
Then, O beloved, would I cry unto the Lord of the Primum Mobile to teach me the Art of the Whirling Motion of Eternity.
Thus, whirling within Thee, our never-ending nuptial feast shall be celebrated, and a new System of Revolving Orbs be brought to birth.
Ah! the shrill cry of Ecstacy of that Refined Rapture---the Orgasm of the Infinite Within.

XVIII. The Rainbow

As I sat in the shelter of the forest glade, my eye caught the multi-coloured gleam of diamonds. I looked again; the Sun rays were playing upon the dew which clung to a little curved twig.
It seemed like a tiny rainbow of promise.
Then, while I watched in wonder, a small grey spider bridged the arch of the bow with his silken thread.
Ah! My Beloved, thus, too, hath the Spider of Destiny woven his silken rope from extreme to extreme of the Great Rainbow of Promise.
Fate hath fitted me as an Arrow to the String of Destiny in the bow of the Sun.
But Whose Hand shall draw that Mighty Bow, O Beloved, and send me upon fleet wings to my resting place within Thine Heart?

XIX. Dropped Dew

As I came from tending the Rose Garden and was about to return to my humble shelter, my eyes caught the gleam of dropped dew like a tiny trail along the path.
It was very early; the Sun had not yet re-arisen; the Stars still twinkled faintly in the sky.
Who could have come before me to the Garden?
I followed the trail of dew, stooping down so that I saw in each crystal drop the reflection of a tiny star.
Thus came I to my lady's chamber; she it was who carrying roses had left this silvery thread as a clue to her hiding place.
When I found her, her eyes were closed, as she pressed the fragrant the pink blossoms to her white breast.
Then did I bury my face in the blossoms and I saw not her eyes when she opened them in wonder.
Thus, too, would I follow the Star-trail of Dropped Dew, ere the re-arisen Sun hides Thee from me, O My Beloved!
Thus would I come to Thee and bury my face in Thy Breast amid the Roses of Heaven.
Nor should I dare to look into Thine eyes, having discovered Thy secret---the Dew of Love---the Elixir of Life.

XX. Twilight

 

Twilight... and in a few brief moments the Stars will begin to peep. I will await Thee, here amid the heather, O Beloved.
I wait... no stars appear for a mist has stolen up from the foot of the mountains.
Thus I waited for a sight of Thy Star Body till the cold damp mist of suppresed emotion chilled my being and my reason returned.
The woman stood girt with a sword before me. Emotion was overcome by clarity of perception. Then did I remember Thy words: "The Khabs is in the Khu not the Khu in the Khabs. Worship then the Khabs and behold my light shed over ye."
Thus turned I my thoughts within, so that I became concentrated upon the Khabs---the Star of mine inmost being. Then did Thy Light arise as a halo of rapture, and I came a little to lie in Thy bosom.
But I offered one particle of dust---and I lost all in that hour.
Such is the Mystery of Her who demandest naught in sacrifice.
The twilight is returned.

XXI. The Dog Star

Wisdom hath said: "Be not animal; refine thy rapture! The canst thou bear more joy!"
I have been like an unleashed hound before Thee, O Beloved. I have striven towards Thee and Thou seest in me only the Dog Star.
Yet will I not fall into the Pit called Because, there to perish with the dogs of reason. There is no reason in me; I seek Understanding, O Mother of Heaven.
Thus, with my face buried in the black earth, do I turn my back upon Thee. I will refine my rapture.
So Thou mayest behold me as I am, and so Thou shalt Understand at last, O Beloved; for in reverse Thou readest this DOG aright.
Hast Thou not said: "There is none other?"

XXII. Pot-pouri

The roses are falling. This is the night of the full moon whereon the children of Sin attend the Sacred Circle.
Therein they will sit divided---but not for love's sake---for they know Thee not---O Beloved. Into the Elements, the fiery, the watery, the airy and the earthly Signs are they divided when they gather at the Full Moon within the forest.
I wandered down the deep shadowy glade, there I espied a tiny sachet of pot-pouri, dropped---maybe---from the streaming girdle of one of the maidens.
Tenderly I raised it. Its perfume is like unto the perfume of her I love. She, too, perhaps, has heard the call of the moon and is even now on her way to the secret tryst.
But hast Thou not said: "Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing and any other thing; for thereby cometh hurt."
What matter then the name of the maiden? What matter the flowers of which it is composed?
Yet dare I not burn this incense unto Thee, O Beloved, because of Thine hair, the Trees of Eternity.
Oh! Little sachet of pot-pouri, thou hast reminded me of her I love, for the roses are falling, it is the night of the Full Moon and the children of Sin gather to attend the Sacred Circle.

XXIII. Red Swansdown

It hath been told how Parzival shot and brought down the Swan of Ecstacy as it winged over the Mountain of the Grail.
But there is within the archives another story, unheard by the ears of men.
From the breast of the Eternal Swan floated one downy feather, steeped in blood. This did the youngest and least worthy of the Knights hide tenderly in his bosom till he concealed it within the hard pillow of his lonely couch.
Night after night that holy pillow became softer; sweeter and sweeter were his dreams. And one night---the night of the crowning of Parzival---he was granted the Great Vision wherein the Stars became like flecks of Swansdown upon the Breast of Heaven, each living and throbbing, for they were steeped in Blood.
Then did every atom of his being become a Star racing joyfully through the Great Body of the Lady of Heaven. Thus in sweet sleep came he into the Great Beyond.
Grant unto me Thy Pillow of Blood and Ecstacy, O Beloved!

XXIV. Passing Clouds

A dark night: Not a star is visible, but presently the moon shines out through a rift in the clouds. And I remember, "The sorrows are but shadows, they pass and are done, but there is that which remains."
Yet is the moon but illusion.
A dull day: but presently the Sun is seen as the clouds are dispelled by His light.
Is He that which remains?
Night once more: the Sun is lost to sight, only the moon reminds me of His presence. The clouds scud swiftly across the Sky and disappear.
Thy Star Body is visible, O Beloved; all the sorrows and shadows have passed and there is that which remains.
When clouds gather, let me never forget Thee, O Beloved!

XXV. The Coiled Serpent

Thus have I heard:
The ostrich goeth swiftly; with ease could he outstrip those who covet his tail-feathers, yet when danger cometh he burieth his head in the sand.
The tortoise moveth slowly and when embarrased he stoppeth, withdrawing into his own shell; yet he passeth the hare.
The hare sleepeth when he should be swiftly moving; he runneth in his dreams thinking himself at the goal.
But the Coiled Serpent hath wisdom, for he hideth his tail and it is not coveted; he raiseth his head and fears not; he moveth slowly like the tortoise, yet withdraweth not; he nestles close to the hare, darting his tongue with swiftness, yet falleth not asleep by the wayside.
Would that I had the Wisdom of the Coiled Serpent, O Beloved, for Thou hast said: "Put on the wings, arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!"

XXVI. Love and Unity

Twenty-six is the numeration of the Inneffable Name, but It concealeth Love and Unity.
The Four-lettered Name implieth Law, yet it may be divided for love's sake; for Love is the law.
The Four-lettered Name is that of the elements, but it may be divided for the chance of Union; for there is Unity therein.
There is but One Substance and One Love and while these be twenty-six they One through thirteen which is but a half thereof.
Thus do I play with numbers who would rather play with One and that One Love.
For Thou hast said: "There is naught that can unite the divided but love!"
And is not Achad Ahebah?

XXVII. The Riddle

What is that which cometh to a point yet goeth in a circle?
This, O Beloved, is a dark saying, but Thou hast said: "My colour is black to the blind, but the blue and gold are seem of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me."
And Hadit hath declared: "There is a veil; that veil is black."
I would that I could tear aside the veil, O Beloved, for seeing Thee as Thou art, I might see Thee everywhere, even in the darkness that cometh to a point yet goeth in a circle.
For Hadit, the core of every star, says "It is I that go," and Thou, Mother of the Stars, criest "To me! To me!"
Resolve me the Riddle of Life, O Beloved, for loving Thee I would behold Thy Secret Glory.

XXVIII. Sayings

Isis hath said: "I am all that was and that is and that shall be, and no mortal hath lifted my veil."
Who cares what is back of the moon?
Jehovah showed his back unto Moses, saying: "No man hath seen my face at any time."
Who cares to face the elements?
Hadit hath said: "I am life and the giver of life; therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death."
Who cares to know death?
But Thou, O Beloved, hath said: "I give unimaginable joys on earth, certainty, not faith, while in life upon death, peace unutterable, rest, ecstacy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice."
Who would not long to invoke Thee under Thy Stars, O Beloved?

XXIX. The Falling Star

Falling, falling, falling! Thus fall the Rays from Thy Body of Stars upon this tiny planet, O Beloved! Innumerable streams of Light like Star-rain upon the black earth.
Since every man and every woman is a star, their lives are like unto streams of light concentrated upon every point in Space.
As I lay with arms out-stretched, my bare body shining like ivory in the darkness. my scarlet abbai flung wide, mine eyes fixed upon the star-lit Heaven; I felt that I, too, was falling, falling, falling, in an ecstacy of fear and love into the void abyss of space.
Then did I remember that Thou art continuous. Beneath, above, around me art Thou. And lo, from a falling star I became as a comet wheeling in infinite Circles, each at a different angle, till my course traced out the Infinite Sphere that is the Symbol of Thee, O Beloved.
Then did I aspire to find the Centre of All.
And even now I am falling, falling, falling.

XXX. Justice

I am a Fool, O Beloved, and therefore am I One or Nought as the fancy takes me.
Now am I come to Justice, so that I may be All or Naught according to the direction of vision.
No Breath may stir the Feather of Truth, therefore is Justice ALone in L. Yet the Ox-goad is Motion and Breath Matter if it be called the Ox which is also A.
How foolish are these thoughts, which are but as the Sword in the hand of Justice. They are as unbalanced as the Scales that stir not, being fixed in the figure of Law above the Court House of a great City.
But Thou hast said: "Love is the law, love under will."
And Love is the Will to Change and Change is the Will to Love.
Even in the stern outline of the Scales of Justice do I perceive the Instrument of Love, and in the Life Sentence, the Mystery of Imprisonment in Thy Being, O Beloved!

XXXI. Not

Three Eternities are passed... I have outstripped a million Stars in my race across Thy Breast---The Milky Way.
When shall I come to the Secret Centre of Thy Being?
Time, thou thief, why dost thou rob the hungry babe? Space, thou hadst almost deceived me.
O Lady Nuit, let me not confound the space-marks!
Then, O Beloved, Thy Word came unto me, as it is written: "All touching; All penetrant."
Thus left I Time and Space and Circumstance, and every Star became as an atom in my Body, when it became Thy Body. Now never shall I be known, for it is I that go.
But Thou, O Beloved, though Thou art infinitely Great, art Thou not energized by the Invisible Point---the Infinitely Small?
A Million Eternities are Present, Deem not of Change; This is the Here and Now, and I am

NOT