ESSAY ON THE WITCHCRAFT
We are as old as man. A million years ago we sang the first cradle song. Against the first fear, our power. Against the first evil, our spells. Against the first illness, our remedies. We are the oldest religion in the world and the strongest. We were with the first men, we shall be with the last. Under our protection, with our encouragement man dared the universe, conquered the forest, conquered the beasts, mastered the elements, for a time, even himself.
For hunting and crops we knew spells that gave man the belief, the faith to avail. Against the terror by night we raised a barrier, against the demons in the soul of the tribe, we made availing rituals. Under our guidance man came up from the beasts. There was no other force strong enough to mold him, and to protect him from himself.
Long ago on a catastrophic time man became separate from us, from the forces of his secret nature. He threw himself upon his intellect, upon the sterile gods of authority and reason. From our religion, that was living, as only life and love are alive, he turned to dead gods, dead creeds, dead dogmas. In his agony and terror he built terrible cities, temples to the death he let into his soul. He made demons, infused them with the breath of his life, enticed them into his heart, and then did a devil dance across the pages of history. Now his demons put on the mask of all the virtues, and took to themselves all the crowns, until in his whole world he knew nowhere to turn.
We waited. When the flames of the stake, upon the rack, under the lash, we waited, and carried in our hearts the secret seed that can in its hour, redeem the world. We waited, because although we have the power, it is unlawful to use power where only love can avail. Man cannot be forced to his heritage. He must come to it freely, of his own will.
In the weary centuries where love was denied and trampled, truth hunted and hounded, and beauty twisted and distorted, we kept the old ways alive. On mountains and secret heaths, in lonely and desolate places we gathered the covens of the witchcraft. We held the Agape, the love feasts. We danced and lived and loved in the old, wild ways of freedom and joy. We communicated the secret knowledge of the sources of life. We communicated and we guarded.
In fairy tales and playing cards, in myths and legends and rumors, in strange poems and old songs we hid the secret knowledge. And now and then an adventurer into dark ways and lonely lands of the soul has come amazed upon the pearl of great price, upon the wonder and the power, the secret glory that has made him one of us.
But for the vast majority of men, the secret knowledge is lost. Lost of you, do not know our world and the world you know is only a fragment, a shadow, of the great world where we adventure. It is as though scholars, pedants, would speak of love or hate saying, it is thus, or it is so. But the man who loves or hates knows, and his knowledge is of a different world.
Now the great Western drama of pretense and evasion draws finally to a close. Man is trapped in hos own lies, betrayed by his own gods. And the hand of science has torn the veil from the face of the god that men worship, and behold, it is death. For man needs above all things love, and for him now there is not love, but only the face of death, that he has worshipped. Demons in the shape of monstrous machines rule his nightmares. Incubi bestride his marriage bed and give poisoned suck to his children. His virtue is a lie, his honor is a lie, his marriage is a lie, his works are a lie, and in these lies he is caught like a silly and pitiful spider in the web of his own weaving.
But it is not our task to castigate men, or catalogue his follies. Man himself knows now that he is trapped. He knows that he is fooled, loveless, betrayed. We do not need to tell him this. It is our task to show him the way to wisdom to love and to freedom.
For a little time, between now and Armageddon, we are loosed in the world. We have the freedom to speak, the opportunity to instruct, so that those who have ears can hear. We are come to make a door out of hell, to gather the elect before the days of wrath. We have power, the power to reach anywhere and touch any man – a power greater than armies, empires, nations – if we will to use it. We have knowledge, knowledge that will save a damned soul out of the lowest hell – if he wills it. But no power and no knowledge can avail in the absence of will and love.
We offer these instructions in the knowledge that any person who is able to use them – who will use them – will be able to awaken the powers of his will and his love. We do not ask faith, we ask only trial and from trial will come success, and from success knowledge that is stronger than faith.
It is difficult to explain the working of the secret forces in man, and his true relationship with the total universe. Man is hypnotized by his training, by the vicious circle of lies handed down from generation to generation, and he cannot see beyond the evil dream he calls reality into the real world. Therefore it is not possible for the uninitiated man to fully understand the reasons and object of our training in the beginning. To start, he must act on faith, proof and knowledge will come. The Power works. It avails. Let him demonstrate this fact first. Understanding will come with his own growth.
The theoretical background furnished with our instructions goes about as far as possible a complete grasp can only come with individual growth, aided by private instructions which we provide for advanced persons. The way that we show is not easy. It is hard, because to know oneself is always hard. To break through the shell of the little world, to undo the hypnotization of generations, that is difficult. We have no soothing syrup. We do not come in the masks of morality, sentimentality, or lying virtue, with techniques designed to lull the soul into its final death. We call men to danger, to adventure, to dare the universe, to know the terror of the pit.
Man is a radical being, with the capabilities of a god. His powers are not developed by inhibition and repression, but by courage and in freedom. It is a terrible world that men has made. Only his blindness prevented him from knowing how terrible. Now that he is beginning to see, his soul is struck with terror. It is only with the greatest determination and high courage, aided by knowledge and technique, that he can leave this false world and find the great world that is his true home.
All men have a sense of this. In their hearts they know the futility of life in the little world. Sometimes they feel the stirring of the old freedom and the old joy – the promise of spring and summer, of the mountains, the forests and the stars. The promise in their own hearts calling them to go forth – to keep faith. But they are constrained by convention and fear, by false sentiment and false responsibility. This is the incredible cruelty of men to themselves and to their fellows, that they deny beauty, and love, and freedom for the sake of a convention that is the mask of death.
We have the courage to affirm that these things are true, and have the power to show them to have eyes to see. To those that can follow we will show the laws of the ego, of love and hate, of life and death. We will explain the origin and nature of religion and morals, and the true relation of man with himself and with the universe. We will explain the laws, formulas, and techniques whereby men can develop his own powers, and cause all changes soever to occur in conformity with will. We will show man how to become the master of change and illusion, and how to discover and move and live and love in the great world, whose name is eternity.
In the name of God and Christ, in the name of morality and patriotism, men have made a hell on earth. These, as we have said, are the masks for demons. No man and no god can exist against nature, and the alternative, however palliated is always demonic.
We come in our own name, in the name of the Witchcraft. Fools, looking upon the surface, will be amused. Cowards, looking beneath, will be appalled. But those who are of us, looking deep within, will see that which was from the beginning, and which is to the end.
Try, and see.
I
The ego is founded upon the need to be loved, and is thus easily poisoned at its source by fear and hatred. Lacking the knowledge of how to obtain love, it is overwhelmed by fear, and fearing the loss of love, it is obsessed by hate. For the ego, the expression of love is a technique to obtain love, and hatred is intended to conceal love. Therefore hatred is at the root of its love, and love is at the root of its hate. This the law of bipolarity can be formulated for the ego. For every expressed desire, feeling, emotion, or attitude, an exactly equal and opposite force is concealed. Under certain circumstances these forces can quickly change polarity. The centre of rest is, of course, indifference.
This is what is meant by the saying of Buddha, that the end of desire is sorrow. For the ego, as Nietzsche points out, desires everlasting gratification, everlasting repetition of pleasurable stimuli; and the nature of the universe is change. Therefore this desire is doomed to frustration, and the ego hates the desire on which it feeds.
The child desires the love of the parent, and will only get this by showing love. In abnormal cases, where love isn’t present it will at least get attention by showing hatred, by misbehaving. This is the root of hypnosis, and the hypnotic basis of our training. The hypnotist, the schoolteacher, any person symbolizing authority is relate to the parent, and we literally knock ourselves out in obeying, or, by the law of opposites, by disobeying, in order to obtain the needed love.
The standard ego, then, is formulated in terms of the mores, customs, conventions, and religion of the tribe, in conformity to which it believes that it will obtain the needed love, approval and security. But a man is more than a standard ego. He is a being, an individual, a star that has his own course to follow, and his own destiny to determine. Therefore he also hates the conformity which stifles his individuality and paralyzes his will. He is always ready for the programs of war, exploitation, revolt and persecution in which he can project upon and punish in others the fear, guilt and hatred he feels towards himself and his own tribe. The more brutal and restrictive his mores, the more he will praise his own ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ and seek more savage vengeance on others for the wrongs he does to himself. Examples are not lacking, and hardly need to be pointed.
The ego can be educated, and this is perhaps the first step on the path to the larger world. It is quite possible to obtain all the love needed, and thus overcome fear and hatred, if one has the courage to apply the proper formula and techniques. In order to obtain love, it is only necessary to first show love (of the kindly, gentle, interested sort): then to show love only to reciprocated love, and indifference to continued indifference or hatred. This mans is certain and will never fail. No matter what amount of inhibition, repression or neurosis is present, the instructed will be able to solve any human problem with this technique. He must understand that whatever he may feel or think on the subject, love is the thing that he needs and wants more than anything else in the world. Love is the essential and fundamental power of the universe, and all effects and changes whatsoever are wrought by that power.
The will to power and the will to submit are equal and opposite expressions of the desire to be loved. All good and all evil, all construction and all destruction are made possible by the power to love. Therefore have we said love all men? No, not unless this is natural to you. But know how to obtain the love of all, or else their hatred, for this is wisdom.
How easy it is to make the love spells and charms we know. For it is only necessary to tell them that we command their love, or easily to impress this upon their astral body or unconscious mind by appropriate links and symbols of our will, and they must love. The power is absolute. Also to move men to do anything whatsoever by these means, even to go mad or die, is also possible. But knowing the root in love, one should go easily in these matters.
The powers of men are limited by ignorance, by repression, and by infantile conscience. Ignorance may be overcome by knowledge, and repression by devotion to the Witchcraft, whose good and evil are not the good and evil of the little world.
This law is applicable to any emotional problem of the ego, but its detailed working in particular cases is beyond the scope of this work. Particularly problems should be referred to us for individual consideration. When, either through the failure of the standard ego on a major front, or through the growth of the individual in knowledge, the values of the little world are seen to be inadequate, several things may occur. The true self may, upon this opportunity, begin the promptings that should lead o explanation and further growth. But the individual, misunderstanding these promptings, may formulate a neurosis, which effects a pseudo compromise. If the neurosis is stable his progress will stop at this point. If it is unstable, he becomes further confused by the doubts and terrors liberated by his conflict, and ends in a complete breakdown. In these cases, psychiatric treatment can do little more than patch up the ego, give it some “safe” neurosis in the form of false or partial explanations of its problems, and return it as nearly as possible to the standard base. In all such cases the love which the patient believes he is receiving from the psychiatrist is the principle therapeutic agent, except in the instances where the treatment is so unpleasant that the patient is convinced that he will get no love whatsoever by his behavior. The mechanisms involved in the cause and cure of the major diseases are much the same.
If, however, the individual has the knowledge and the courage to listen to the voice of his true self, and to heed its promptings, he will win through the love that is beyond the symbols of terror and doubt, he will meet the terrible mother, the serpent woman, the sphynx, and hear again the awful question asked of Oedipus, while his life hangs in the balance. He will meet the demon father, the crusty idiocy, malice, and horror that lies on the threshold of the little world. He will find his alter self, the equal and opposite of all that he thinks he is, as a shining beauty and a desolate terror in the unknown night of his soul.
In these experiences the ego will be totally altered or completely destroyed in the death that must precede a rebirth into life. The terror, agony and despair that accompany this process cannot be minimized. They are made doubly awful monstrous by the abortions created by man in his folly that infest the gateways of life.
But this is the adventure for which man was created. Man is a being who in the little world is no more than a see, whose incredible flowering in eternity cannot be dimly imagined by the denizens of the pool world.
In the abyss of desolation and corruption, in the womb of Babalon, where the soul seed lies fallow at the heart of darkness, the secret self moves and works and gives birth to itself, to its total self on the glorious stellar body of our Lady Babalon. And behold, a star is born in the firmament, the grave cerements of the awful mother fall away, and we see the immortal beloved. The mask of the demon father cracks, and reveals our lord the sun that is ourself, son of the father and father of the sun, and we go forth under the covenant, beyond the Law and the Doctrine, to the upland meadows of forever, even to the radiant City of the Pyramids.
And this is the process, beyond thought or description or imagination, dimly previsioned in the inadequate symbol of our language. For we, even we have accepted the restriction of the law and the doctrine, in order that we may act as guides to the greater world that is Our Kingdom.
Now we have spoken perhaps untimely of the last step, infinitely far away, but it is with the first step, immediate and practical, with which we should concern ourselves here.
Consider that you have allied yourself with a living organization that is as old as man, and of whose nature and aims you now have some conception. To this degree you have already removed yourself from the standard concepts of the little world.
In the next step, formulate as best you can what you believe to be the sum total of your will, your true nature, your purpose, and your principal object in life. Ask yourself, and you will receive an answer. Write this down, reduce it to a sentence, and if possible, to a word. Make this your motto for the time and check it again after a sufficient period has elapsed.
Memorize and make a daily practice of the banishing ritual of the pentagram. This will assist in dispelling the illusions and restrictions of the little world, and in affirming and strengthening the link with the true self.
Make up a list of the problems and questions that are most important to you, and submit them to your coven, they will assist us in determining the course of your instruction.
II
When fools wish to demonstrate the truth of the most obvious sort of pragmatic they are wont to refer to the fact that one and one always make two. This is of course untrue. There is only one , one of the same sign, and in order to differentiate and obtain another or different one, we must indicate the sign this: plus one and minus one. But plus one and minus one do not equal two, they equal zero. This fact may also be expressed in the equation 2=0. This is a fundamental law of the universe. In the union of any two equal and opposite forces, both are annihilated. The universe is in a state of strain between the desire to love and desire to be loved, to pass and to be passed, in short to unite analogous concepts exist in toto of the space time continuum, the master-energy relationships, and the universe as an interplay between the yin and the yang, or the Lingam and the Yoni. All possibilities and all phenomena whatever exists and manifest along this strain, whose true name is love. Existence swings between systole and diastole, action and rest, life and death in the cosmic beat that regulates alike starts and atoms, man and the milky way, all that is, has been, all that was, will be, everything expressed in the now. Only resistance to change creates the illusion of change – the only death is the fear of death. Whoso realizes his place in the heart of love, in the centre of the eternal interplay that changes ever and never changes… [unreadable]…are, he has passed into the great world that is beyond that men call death.
Love is the key to all gates and in every kind of live and every sort of union progress and initiation is possible. Therefore the nature of love must not be limited or restricted, but rather must it be explored and experienced in every kind and degree, for thereby alone man comes to Babalon, whose name is understanding. For each love there is a barrier guarded by a demon, and beyond that barriers lies a sanctuary that yields only to courage and will, therefore to assert that only one sort or condition of love is lawful or is to thwart nature and the possibility of human progress. This is the root of the western neurosis, for the frustration and restriction of love leads ultimately to the mania of despair, homicide, and suicide.
The brute laws and mores that regulate, or pretend to regulate sexual conduct place a premium on pretense and hypocrisy and underlie the twisted and broken lives, the ruined children the neuroses, mania and sorrow that are men’s shameful statistics. In marriage, that stinking farce, society has sentimentalized the sex relation, and browbeats parent and child with the bludgeon of duty. Marriage is based on mutual mistrust, creating a legal and moral bond on love, that fear would shackle and grasp against all reason and experience. Upon restriction followeth hatred, and the inevitable frustration of the sentimental and infantile concepts of the movie versions of life; and these forces combine together to make a hell on earth, and what a hell. Love is trust, to deny trust is to deny love, and love is both denied and defiled by this infernal sacrament.
There is a marriage that is beyond the corruption and malice of the little world, but it is not made by priests and lawyers. It is possible to free men and women of high courage who can meet and mete and beget and create in love, in a union of body, mind and spirit that is beyond morality or law. Chastity, in the large world, means purity, fidelity means purity; a passion unalloyed by the lickspittle virtues that piddle off their powers in masturbation wet dreams. Love here is an ultimate devotion, even to the total union that destroys both the lover and the beloved, the known and the unknown, in the opening of a sanctuary that is not of this world. The fear, the doubt, the mistrust, and desire to hold and possess, the terror of change and alteration are exactly the shackles, the barriers, and the demon guardians that prevent the culmination of love, the attainment of the sanctuary.
Another of the murderous illusions that frustrates and destroys love is the over-valuation of one aspect of or attitude towards the love or the beloved, and the depreciation or denial of other equally or more real attributes. Both in the self, and in that which is seen as the not self are all the opposites to that which is expressed. It is essential to know, to understand and to love these opposites equally with their bipolar manifestations. Unless the seeds of fear and hate understood, they cannot be transmitted. Unless the roots of lust, of both the normal and the so-called abnormal types, are accepted, they cannot be freed to take their rightful place as joyous nymphs and satyrs in the Garden of Pan. Otherwise these things, disguised, distorted, denied, are the demons and monsters of a private hell. If it cannot do this cleanly and freely in the open, expressing the total nature of man, then it will unite with devils to create monsters and abortions.
This is not a question of a theoretical morality, of what should be right or wrong in accordance with the fuzzily self-righteous concepts of preachers, lawgivers, or scholastic philosophers. It is a simple matter of what works, and what does not work, in terms of life and common experience. The so-called ‘breakdown’ of morals following a pseudo moral ear is simply the realization that the morals are false and unworkable. The reaction into an equal and opposite pattern already established by the prior system is often appalling but is of course no more than the open acceptance of what has gone on underneath all the time.
A solution cannot be found in Christian morals or in the looking glass pattern, a reaction that is conceived in terms of sin. The solution lies in the rejection of the entire Judeo-Christian system, and the acceptance of a system based on love, understanding and freedom. Only in this sense can love be free. For one, love may be conceived in terms of polygamy, for another monogamy, for another, homosexuality, and another bisexuality. We cannot assert that one is more right than another, or better. We can only assert and assure his freedom in his own way, to explore, to experience, to know, and to come to his own conclusions in his own time a free man.
Therefore let the candidate envision the mystery of Babalon, whose name is Understanding. Let him imagine that Love which partakes of all love, and meditate upon every sort of love, until he perceives the equal holiness of each. And let him visualize the Star Goddess, whose worship is love and who accepts every sort of love and the love of every sort of being, as Her worship, and whose love is towards all that lives, and let him understand that every object of his love is Her altar.
(Note. Although this is literally true, the altar and that which consecrates it, that is Babalon, should never be confused. For the one is the servant, and the other the Goddess.)
And that in all love he has ever known or felt She has been incarnate. Then, performing the ritual of the pentagram, and the ritual of the hexagram that is the opening of the sanctuary, let him evoke. Let him enflame his heart, that thereby he may partake somewhat of the Sacrament that is her body.
III
When two opposites unite they are annihilated in the creation of a third, which contains elements of both, and yet is different from either. For every question that is answered a question is implied. The union of opposite ideas creates another idea which has an opposite. Thus a creative formula in nature, and the impossibility of giving a simple and final answer (in terms of logic) to any question, are illustrated. This is the formula IAO which was of such significance and to use the Egyptian adepts. I is Isis the Mother. O is Osiris, the Father. A is Apohis (or Horus) the destroyer – the equilibration between the primal forces – the Child. On the surface, the formula is catastrophic, the cycle is not closed, but of course regeneration is implied. The formula describes a secret technique of high magick, and also represents three ages or evolutionary stages of man.
The first age is the age of Isis, the Mother. This is the primal matriarchy, of which vestiges may still be observed in truly primitive cultures. In this culture, the female goddess is supreme, and decent is matrilinear. The king or priest is the consort of the goddess, and wins his position by trial, ordeal and initiation. The child is raised as a ward of the tribe without competition with the parent for the love of the child and with the assurance of an adequate amount of mother love. The child thus matures in full security and with a qualified faith in an adequate and satisfactory love life. The nature of the culture is magical and experimental and artistic. There is a lack of crystalized forms organization or social regimentation. Conceptions of the aggressive ego are not very well formulated.
This culture began its decline some seven thousand years ago concurrently with the rise of the patriarchy, and the beginnings of modern civilization. Interesting aspects remain in the history of religions, where the decline or regression of the female goddess, as of the Shekinah of the Hebrew religion, or in the Arab system, may be observed.
This state is described in Genesis as the fall, that is, the fall from innocence, instinct and naturalness concurrent upon the development of self-consciousness and intellect. The statement of the Elohim – “lest ye eat of the fruit of the tree of life and become as one of us” is the most significant. In the tree of knowledge, a sexual mystery is concealed, and in the concept of the fall of a certain defilement of this mystery is suggested. The Elohim is bisexual, hence us, and the barrier is raised against a future profanation in the direction of the direction of a mono sexual system.
The patriarchy was primarily launched by the male with secondary sexual characteristics, who aspired to abrogate to himself the feminine prerogative, concealing his tendencies under a guise of excessive masculinity, he proceeded to establish the authority, the law, the military power and the regimentation that was the basis of civilization.
With the male assumption of social paternity, the male child was regulated to the rule of a minor competition for the mother’s love, and this in turn begin the castration fear and father hatred that is the basis for the aggressive age.
It is no coincidence that the real rulers, the religious leaders, politicians-priests and spell binders are men with secondary female characteristics, while the second estate, the military men, empire builders and criminals who make their work by killing and pushing other men out of the way are intense father haters.
In the process of depreciating the goddess, she was reduced first to the status of a minor consort of her male counterpart and finally to an enemy or demon. But the victory of the priest was sterile, of and by himself he could not create, of and by himself he was nothing, and he had banished and denied the one possible partner that would fulfill his nature and crown he creative will. Thus the most terrible of all human institutions…
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…the death cult was evolved. Since, man reasoned, he was supreme in nature, and yet sterile, unless he consorted with the demon woman, then nature and life itself was sterile. In this case death was the desired object, death and some hopeful paradise beyond death, and all life must be sacrificed to death. The philosophy of ascetism is not phrased in these terms, but these are its basic tenets, the roots of every ascetic system, including Christianity. In these terms, the doctrine is too obviously sterile to stick. But Christianity, by adopting a spayed and degraded Isis rechristened Mary, by concealing the identity of the Holy Ghost, and by insulting women with the calumny of the virgin birth, took the imagination of the multitude of slaves.
When this would have petered out had not the rulers of the empire seen the tremendous advantage of a religion that put a premium on resignation, sacrifice, and humility. It is true that early Christianity did not quite do that – particularly the Christianity of Clemens, Valentinus and the Gnostics. But it was soon altered until it did. Books of the old and new testament that contained sexual doctrines and revolutionary ethics of all true religion were thrown out bodily, and in someone totally obliterate. The world began by Constantine was continued by Charlemagne and the night riding Vehm, culminating in the great betrayal that impressed the free men of Europe into the hopeless series of the feudal system; and the Church preaching sin and damnation terrorized the souls of men, while their racks and fires agonized their bodies. The old mysteries, the secret doctrines, the ways to life and love were kept and guarded by Us. We organized the serfs into a secret underground, at a time when they were hunted with hounds, for sport. We taught them hope and joy when Church and state conspired to quench all hope and forbid all joy. We, as the Vaudois, the Bulgars, the Troubadours, the Alchemists, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and in our own name, the Witchcraft, carried the fire when all the lights of Europe were extinguished, and it was not to god, nor Christ, nor the king, nor the pope that men turned in their extremity, but to us. Because we alone availed. We were the hand behind the Jacquery and the Free Masons. We raised up Cagliostro and Rasputin, all to sweep down the network of terror and falsehood that bound the soul of man.
But man was not ready, and we withdrew to our own place.
Freed from the tyranny of kings and popes, man turned again to the worship of his own intellect, of his material powers. He sought for love in the barren symbols of money and power and prestige, and hid the bareness of his soul in the lip worship of false morality and pseudo religion.
Then in the dawn of the twentieth century, signs of the breakup of the patriarchy, and the beginnings of the new eon, the age of Horus, began to appear. Recognized at first only by adepts, these signs are now becoming manifest to all, amid increasing confusion and terror. The betrayal of nations, the breakup of the home, the incidence of two terrible wars, the atomic bomb, and the tremendous increase in childish, epicene and homosexual tendencies are a few of the major physical indications of the birth of the new age. The nature of the new age was predicted and has been greatly clarified by the great adept Aleister Crowley, who was also instrumental in its inception. It was foreseen by Shelly, Byron and Swinburne (briefly) and predicted in some tremendous passages by Nietzsche.
But the great event of the eon, which will bring with it the possibility of redemption to the whole western world, has not yet been made manifest. (Note. Refers to Parsons’ belief that he had brought about the incarnation of Babalon) We, who contain the knowledge of this event among Ourselves until the time is ripe, and who were in fact the instruments of its gestation, give these present indications.
The Aeon of Horus is the nature of a child. (Horus is in fact called the Crowned and Conquering Child, and may be related to the Child described in Enoch). To perceive this we must conceive of the nature of a child without the veil of sentimentality. Beyond good and evil, perfectly gentle, perfectly ruthless, containing all possibilities within the limits of heredity, and highly susceptible to training and environment. But the nature of Horus is also the nature of force, blind, terrible unlimited force. That is why the west stands in immanent danger of annihilation. That is why the west also stands in the possibility of the most rapid and tremendous evolution that the world has ever known. The balance must be love and understanding, or all else fails. Now we have said enough for this place.
Then let the student read and meditate upon the ritual of Horus, constructing the total nature of Horus out of the polyphony of the component concepts. And, if he dare, let him invoke Horus and partake of the power and energy that is his right under the New Aeon. And let him also consider the love whereby Horus may be fulfilled and dignified, and mediating on this, let him prevision and invoke that which is to come.
IV
The name of God has been a body often used to frighten children and slaves into submission. It has also been a source of comfort and inspiration to many in their greatest need, although the price they paid, in terms of guilt sense and sin complex, may have been inordinate. Beyond this the name of God contains a great mystery and a secret source of ultimate power. Like all ancient mysteries, it is concealed beneath a face of deceit and corruption.
The theory has been advanced that the idea of god originates in the child from early concepts of the parents as punitive and protective, all power and all loving. These gradually transfer, as obvious discrepancies manifest. To more remote beings easily identified with tribal religious concepts. This in the matriarchy a mother goddess, in the patriarchy a father god, and so on. There is much to be said for the theory so far as it goes. But if it is easy to see that the patterns of love and sexual attraction are set by the mother for male children contain within themselves the patterns which went to produce the observed result. Then the parent and the tribal concept may pattern the idea of god, but the basic idea of god may also be part of man’s natural equipment.
Religion is one of the many things that isolated cultures, over wide reaches of space and time, have in common. There are numerous confections and virgin births, sacraments and eucharists, surprisingly similar miracles and myths, and ceremonies, rituals, spells and charms that can be reduced to a common denominator. It can certainly be said that man functions religiously, or that he has a religious function. What then is the purpose of this function? To explain the unexplainable and deal with the impossible? To preserve the unity of the tribe? To assure the power of Chiefs and priests? These are partial answers. In one sense, religion is the soul of the tribe. What then of Christianity? But Christianity is not the religion of the West, it is its observance. Machiavelli knew the religion of the west.
In another aspect of the same sense, religion is the repository of certain secret techniques, whereby worthy persons may come to initiation, and there by benefit the tribe, as for example Moses in the secret tradition of Israel. Then what are these secrets and how are they guarded. Well, they are guarded I none way by the fact that they cannot be communicated, they can only be learned. IT may be stated that every god, spirit, angel, demon, myth, ceremony or ritual of a true religion indicates, symbolizes, or is in face a process or state relating to individual initiation. They are the common property of every member of the tribe, and exist equally in his individual and private world and in his concept of the cosmos. Further, every taboo covers occult, the world taboo also means holy. In Christianity, where the principle taboo is sex, the religion is obviously a sex cult in the most indecent sense of the word, since any religion which forgets the nature of its god is a degraded superstition.
Among the ancient Hebrews the name of God is IHVH (pronounced Yod He Vau He). This is perhaps the most magnificent formula ever devised for symbolizing at once the whole process of nature, and the highest secrets of magic. Yod symbolized God as the primal father, the solar-phallic creative will, or fire. He symbolized God as the mother, the feminine generative principle, the passive will, or water. Vau symbolizes God as the son, the male child of the father and the mother (the apoapsis or Horns or IAO), the will to go, air. He symbolizes God as the daughter, Babalon, She who is to come, earth, the virgin who unites with the father, stimulates him to reactivity, and begins the generative process over again. The cycle is closed, the process is eternal, and contains within itself the seeds of all possibility.
Much nonsense has been written about the true pronunciation of the tetragrammaton, or name of God. The true pronunciation is the true understanding of the cycle, and its application to produce change in the universe, both material and immaterial. This formula is the basis or root of our system of teaching, and its importance cannot be underestimated… It is indeed all powerful as he shal have occasion to demonstrate to the advanced student. For the time being, it will suffice to apply this formula to the derivation of the magical weapons, with which it will be our students next.
The wand relates to Yod, and corresponds with the creative will, Fire, the Magus of the Tarot, BITOM in the Enochian Tablets, and Chokmah on the tree of life. As a weapon it symbolizes the Will of the adept, his creative imagination and phallic force. It is this which wakes his secret self into life, and begin his adventure on the path. Here he will meet with the ordeals, among which are fear and disgust, which are the revulsion and the terror of the known and false self against the intrusion of the unknown and tue self. Doubt will be there and pride and false humility, self-righteousness, pseudo success, craven sentimentality and unbridled lust, and all the other illusions, sinister or seductive, that beset the path, and mind, that old dragon, ever whispering, ever doubting, ever mocking, the very father of illusions, emperor of the shadows in a shadow land. And against all these terrible powers the apprentice magician has only will, (for how should he yet know of love) that root and axis upon which he is incarnate, the purpose that is he from the beginning. Even the first step summons monsters from far and wide, for well the partial selves know that they will be mastered and rule in anarchy no more, in that path is followed. This slender plank, this dim and unknown way that vanishes in darkness, is indeed the fulcrum that moved the universe. For at the further end awaits his true and total self, the star master, that is Lord of all night and all the power of his being. (Note. After ‘the night and’ there are probable several pages of the ..is missing) This way is most natural and easy to those who are themselves natural, which purity sufficient to perceive something of the being inherent in all phenomena. But of this more in its proper place.
A third method of elemental working is that of invocation, of which examples are given in the practices accompanying this text. In invocation, as in any other scientific procedure the essential requirements are the knowledge of the operation, the quality of the equipment, and a painstaking attention to detail. An invocation, to use a vulgar and none too accurate analogy, is a means of ‘tuning in’ on that which is desired and ‘tuning out’ all that which is superfluous or antagonistic to the operation. This is the purpose of the circle which is formulated, either physically or by the preliminary banishing ritual of the pentagram. The altar represents the consecrated body of the magician.
The ritual of the hexagram corresponds to the opening of the temple to the force desired. A preliminary invocation, such as the Bornless One, invokes the four powers under the rulership of the spirit. The symbol, talismans, weapons and names selected are those which correspond to the particular power invoked, so that the entire work is actually a focusing operation. In this sense it is proper to say that the ritual acts upon the magician, tuning his being to a particular idea. The magician, in turn, reacts upon the universe, bringing this idea into materialization by virtue of his own power. In all cases the problem is one of the formulation and release of energy of the right amount and proper nature in the right direction.
The opposition or hinderance is in the nature of fear, repression, inhibition or ignorance whereby energy is divided against itself and wasted in interior conflicts. Under the Christian system it was believed that the exercise of spiritual powers was only proper and possible to the saint or the sorcerer. The saint gained these powers by austerity and asceticism. The sorcerer, in accepting the sovereignty of Satan, reverse his values of good and evil, and this allayed his conscience and conflicts to the point where a release of power was possible.
The values of the magician are based on understanding. They spring from a knowledge of the law of bipolarity, the relationship of planes, and the laws of correspondences. He will this be able to separate the true values of a given plane from the false values, which are actually true values in the wrong place, and this avoid the two mistakes of asceticism and inversion. Through his progress in understanding he will eliminate false conscience and futile conflicts, exactly as they are symbolically and temporarily eliminated by the techniques of invocation.
Remainder – which is incomplete, not typed.
