The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
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opposite things at the same time.
Consciousness itself is only destroyed by Samadhi.
One can now see the logical process which begins in refusing to think of a foot, and ends by destroying the sense of individuality.
Of the methods of destroying various deep-rooted ideas there are many.
The best is perhaps the method of equilibrium. Get the mind into the habit of calling up the opposite to every thought that may arise. In conversation always disagree. See the other man's arguments; but, however much your judgment approves them, find the answer.
Let this be done dispassionately; the more convinced you are that a certain point of view is right, the more determined you should be to find proofs that it is wrong.
If you have done this thoroughly, these points of view will cease to trouble you; you can then assert your own point of view with the calm of a master, which is more convincing than the enthusiasm of a learner.
You will cease to be interested in controversies; politics, ethics, religion will seem so many toys, and your Magical Will will be free from these inhibitions.
In Burma there is only one animal which the people will kill, Russell's Viper; because, as they say, "either you must kill it or it will kill you"; and it is a question of which sees the other first.
Now any one idea which is not The Idea must be treated in this fashion. When you have killed the snake you can use its skin, but as long as it is alive and free, you are in danger.
And unfortunately the ego-idea, which is the real snake, can throw itself into a multitude of forms, each clothed in the most brilliant dress. Thus the devil is said to be able to disguise himself as an angel of light.
Under the strain of a magical vow this is too terribly the case. No normal human being understands or can understand the temptations of the saints.
An ordinary person with ideas like those which obsessed St. Patrick and St. Antony would be only fit for an asylum.
The tighter you hold the snake (which was previously asleep in the sun, and harmless enough, to all appearance), the more it struggles; and it is important to remember that your hold must tighten correspondingly, or it will escape and bite you.
Just as if you tell a child not to do a thing -- no matter what -- it will immediately want to do it, thought otherwise the idea might never have entered its head, so it is with the saint. We have all of us these tendencies latent in us; of most of them we might remain unconscious all our lives -- unless they were awakened by our Magick. They lie in ambush. And every one must be awakened, and every one must be destroyed. Every one who signs the oath of a Probationer is stirring up a hornets' nest.
A man has only to affirm his conscious aspiration; and the enemy is upon him.
It seems hardly possible that any one can ever pass through that terrible year of probation -- and yet the aspirant is not bound to anything difficult; it almost seems as if he were not bound to anything at all -- and yet experience teaches us that the effect is like plucking a man from his fireside into mid-Atlantic in a gale. The truth is, it may be, that the very simplicity of the task makes it difficult.
The Probationer must cling to his aspiration -- affirm it again and again in desperation.
He has, perhaps, almost lost sight of it; it has become meaningless to him; he repeats it mechanically as he is tossed from wave to wave.
But if he can stick to it he will come through.
And, once he "is" through, things will again assume their proper aspect; he will see that mere illusion were the things that seemed so real, and he will be fortified against the new trials that await him.
But the unfortunate indeed is he who cannot thus endure. It is useless for him to say, "I don't like the Atlantic; I will go back to the fireside."
Once take one step on the path, and there is no return. You will remember in Browning's "Childe Roland to the dark Tower came":
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone: grey plain all round,
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; naught else remained to do.
And this is universally true. The statement that the Probationer can resign when he chooses is in truth only for those who have taken the oath but superficially.
A real Magical Oath cannot be broken: you think it can, but it can't.
This is the advantage of a real Magical Oath.
However far you go around, you arrive at the end just the same, and all you have done by attempting to break your oath is to involve yourself in the most frightful trouble.
It cannot be too clearly understood that such is the nature of things: it does not depend upon the will of any persons, however powerful or exalted; nor can Their force, the force of Their great oaths, avail against the weakest oath of the most trivial of beginners.
The attempt to interfere with the Magical Will of another person would be wicked, if it were not absurd.
One may attempt to build up a Will when before nothing existed but a chaos of whims; but once organization has taken place it is sacred. As Blake says: "Everything that lives is holy"; and hence the creation of life is the most sacred of tasks. It does not matter very much to the creator what it is that he creates; there is room in the universe for both the spider and the fly.
It is from the rubbish-heap of Choronzon that one selects the material for a god!
This is the ultimate analysis of the Mystery of Redemption, and is possibly the real reason of the existence (if existence it can be called) of form, or, if you like, of the Ego.
It is astonishing that this typical cry -- "I am I" -- is the cry of that which above all is not I.
It was that Master whose Will was so powerful that at its lightest expression the deaf heard, and the dumb spake, lepers were cleansed and the dead arose to life, that Master and no other who at the supreme moment of his agony could cry, "Not my Will, but Thine, be done."
Chapter VII.
The Cup
As the Magick Wand is the Will, the Wisdom, the Word of the Magician, so is the Magick Cup his Understanding.
This is the cup of which it was written: "Father, if it be Thy Will, let this cup pass from Me!" And again: "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"
And it is also the cup in the hand of OUR LADY BABALON, and the cup of the Sacrament.
This Cup is full of bitterness, and of blood, and of intoxication.
The Understanding of the Magus is his link with the Invisible, on the passive side.
His Will errs actively by opposing itself to the Universal Will.
His Understanding errs passively when it receives influence from that which is not the ultimate truth.
In the beginning the Cup of the student is almost empty; and even such truth as he receives may leak away, and be lost.
They say that the Venetians made glasses which changed colour if poison was put into them; of such a glass must the student make his Cup.
Very little experience on the mystic path will show him that of all the impressions he receives none is true. Either they are false in themselves, or they are wrongly interpreted in his mind.
There is one truth, and only one. All other thoughts are false.
And as he advances in the knowledge