Announcements from
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    "The Author of the following brilliant article is not only a revolutionary thinker but actually a revolutionist. The New York Times of July 13th gives a long account of how Aleister Crowley, accompanied by several patriotic Irishmen, renounced, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, all allegiance to England and declared the birth of the Irish Republic. In the dawning light Crowley solemnly read the new Irish Declaration of Independence."

    "We come even unto the New Chapel and Thou didst bear away the Holy Grail beneath Thy Druid vestments.
    "Secretly and by stealth did we drink of the informing sacrament. "Then a terrible disease seized upon the folk of the grey land; and we rejoiced."
    So speaks one of the Holy Books of the initiates of a certain secret cult. The disease is presumably boredom; the monotony of life. Even the hope of so exciting an experience as Billy Sunday's hell has been ravished from the parched lips of a multitude too listless even to enjoy the thrill of fear.
    It is not of such stuff that revolutions are made. The proverb says that they cannot be made with rosewater; and ditchwater is worse. The history of the spirit is that of a nerve or a muscle; when it is teased it reacts, for a certain time, more and more strenuously. After that time it tires, until not even the greatest shock can stir it. Under the oppression of the Tudors the manhood of England was in no wise diminished; you had only to whisper "The King of Spain," and somebody jumped right up and singed his beard. The spirit of the nation was indeed so high that a very trifling tax precipitated revolution; and, if I understand American history, George Washington revolted because they charged him thirty cents for a cup of English Breakfast Tea. But with a Callipyge so ponderous as Queen Victoria on the safety-valve, even modern England might have exploded. No; for the wily old lady, before taking her seat, had used the precaution to let down the fires. Her sodden sentimentality, her cotton-wool prudery, her spineless morality, and her suety religion made England chaste as Klingsor, and honest as an Armless Wonder.
    Have you ever observed the effects of the torture called Vigiliarum? It is a very simple experiment to perform. All you have to do is to take a man and exhaust him; then, when he begins to fall asleep, interfere with the process. At first he resents it; for a time this becomes more acute; presently it diminishes, until the man is like a log, and no longer responds to any stimulus. You would think your fun was over; but no! After a certain period the victim suddenly discharges a certain reserve of force in his brain; he starts up a murderous maniac with the strength of fifty men, and unless you have previously secured him in an adequate manner, your trifle of science may prove extremely dangerous.
    This condition has already been seen on one occasion; the French Revolution. There was no clear unity of purpose or idea in that frenzy; the blind giant in his agony struck at foe and friend alike. It was just the utter helplessness of the beast, the lack of constructive thought, that made his rage so dangerous. The moment that Napoleon's master mind seized it and harnessed it, imposed his will on it, France became sane again. The dogmas of Jacobinism were forgotten in five years; a simple, sensible, practical code based on the facts of life instead of on abstract principles of "Justice" was accepted as a matter of course, and has survived not only the other half of Bonapartism, but several distinct types of revolution.
    Let us see whether we can discover any parallel between the France of 1793 and the England of today. England had been reduced to the penultimate stage in 1900. The Boer War did not arouse the martial spirit. Lloyd George without a qualm fastened the last fetters on the limbs of the workmen; he hardly needed the velvet of old-age pensions to cover the cold iron. He labelled the slave, made him keep his own record, and even made him help to pay for it.

With a pace stately and fast
Over English land he past,
Trampling to a mine of blood
The adoring multitude.

    So acutely was the government embarrassed in conducting the war because of shortage of material and equipment, that toward the middle of March the most drastic and autocratic law ever passed by any legislative body in British history was enacted. Broadly speaking, this law gave the government absolute power to take over and conduct the whole or any part of the industry of Great Britain.
    The factories were not turning out proper quantities of munitions. Ship- building firms were working on private contracts. There had been no general voluntary adjustment of manufacturing to changed conditions, as in Germany and France.
    But, while employers were blamed for selfishness and profit hunger, the weightiest blows of censure fell upon the heads of British laborers. Thus the government armed itself with Czar-like powers of compulsion over British industry.
    The government considered this revolutionary statute so necessary that Mr Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, assured the House of Commons that "the success of the war depends upon it." Lord Kitchener, from his place in the House of Lords, told Parliament and the nation that military operations had "been seriously hampered by the failure to obtain skillful labor and by delays in the production of the necessary plants"; and, complaining of labor indifference and trade-unions' restrictions, he grimly declared that the Commandeering bill, as this extreme socialistic measure was popularly called, was "imperatively necessary."
    The newspapers were swift to see and frank to state the profound change which this law wrought in British conditions; and justified it only upon the ground of deadly emergency. The Daily Mail said that the law established "a sort of industrial dictatorship."
    The Daily Express asserted that "The new bill is, of course, State Socialism. That must be accepted."
    The Daily Express, in discussing another subject announced that: "Parliamentary government has temporarily come to an end in Great Britain."

    That was in March. At the end of July the situation is nothing bettered but is rather grown worse. It really never occurred to people that this was going to be anything but a war toy, with corpses complete, in box, five shillings and sixpence. So the nation drifted to a point where even its powdered and plushed lackeys in the American press could not conceal the whole truth. Here is part of an editorial from the lickspittle New York Times.

    The British Government has served its ultimatum on English labor. To the utmost limit of their capacity the factories producing war munitions must have efficient workmen, willing to do full time and no "slacking." The leaders of organized labor have undertaken in seven days to raise a volunteer army of workmen sufficient to supply the Government's demands. If they fail, the Government will have to consider compulsion.
    That is the ultimatum delivered by David Lloyd George in the speech with which he introduced in the House of Commons the so-called War Munitions Bill, a measure which in effect imposes martial law upon so much of British industry as the needs of war require. Besides providing for a volunteer army of workmen to man the factories, who shall enlist like soldiers but wear no uniforms, the bill makes strikes and lockouts illegal, and creates local boards, composed of employers and employees, half and half, presided over by Government Chairmen, which shall sit as final courts; almost like courts- martial, to settle all disputes as to wages, hours, and profits, and suspend any trade-union rules that tend to limit output. That is the crux of the whole matter. Nothing shall be tolerated that limits output.
    Thus comes at last to a head a situation which has occasioned profound chagrin in England.
    Military men are for dressing labor in khaki by force and making it subject to discipline, as soldiers are. To this Arnold Bennett acutely retorts: "You won't change the nature of Clyde men by calling them conscripts. Supposing a shopful of conscripts down tools, what are you going to do? Shoot them? Try it. The dream of getting skilled labor and continuous industry by compulsion is full of nothing but the gravest social danger."
    The sense of that is obvious. You can compel a capitalist to operate his plant on Government orders at full capacity merely by threat of taking possession of it; but you cannot compel a skilled workman to work his best, to work full time, to work for certain wages, or to work at all. If you threaten to shoot him -- why, that is no compulsion. He is not in the Congo. He is in England. The threat will not be executed. So, in one breath the Government threatens compulsion and exhorts him to do his duty. There is still hope that he will respond. There is very grave doubt as to whether he can be requisitioned.

    Of course it is not difficult to foresee the course of events. They will not shoot the workman; they will keep on nagging at him. He will suddenly come to the end of his patience, run amuck, and burn the rags of the British Flag, and of the British Constitution, on the altar of Anarchy.
   

from the Grady Project:

   This poem, apparently one of Grady's later pieces, first appeared in the Red Flame collection of his verse edited by past lodgemaster J. E. Cornelius (Berkeley: 1994), and remains otherwise unseen. The odd word in the seventh line may be a poetic abbreviation (for something like "thronglingly"), or possibly an error or misreading for "strongly." It is the present editor's guess that the verse survives in a scrawled holograph, imperfectly legible at this point.

    We have reached a point in our study roughly corresponding to Geburah on the Tree. Looking at faults in association with the Sephirot has a bit to do with that, but there are other aspects. In The November 1998 e.v. issue of the Thelema Lodge Calendar, an illustration accompanied the 43rd installment of this series. It was the cover art from Paul Riccius' 16th century book Portae Lucis. In this picture, an elderly man holds a lattice style Tree of Life by the path between Malkut and Yesod. Many of the usual paths are missing and the spelling of the names of the Sephirot is not exact. The old man looks a little unhappy, as though he is trying without success to understand the thing. In the illustration, he points to the pavement beneath his feet, as though suggesting that Malkut refers to the earth and that there is something needed in that department. Once a fault or deficiency is found, it may perhaps be avoided, but repair is usually better. In many of the world's religions, crime and immoral act creates a debt that can only be made good by material action. There are various practices which are given out as penances. In the Roman Catholic religion, after confession, the priest may prescribe certain prayers and actions. In lay society, civil courts adjudicate remedies and criminal courts exact penalties of fine or restriction. The trick is to bring a pattern of the mind into manifestation. However obliquely different thought and deed may seem, there is always some relation, even if only a mystical one. Even something apparently random, if done for the right reasons, may turn out well. There are also limits set by circumstance. The often strange tools and actions of the magician must adapt themselves to what is and what may be. A symbol or a token for something that cannot be literally done or procured for use may be substituted. No matter. Actions in the corporeal world are always needed to address a balance in subtler levels of existence.
    Portae Lucis is a very strange book. It was written by a Jew who had turned Christian. His action was not to turn away from what he had known before, but to follow his conversion with teaching about the value of the very thing he had forsaken. He remarked that if you take Yod Hay Vau Hay, the great Jehovah name, and you stick the letter Shin in the middle, the result could be pronounced "Joshua" or "Jesus". It's not the normal spelling, but does support that sound. Other Jews converted to Christianity wrote books with insights and ploys so that Christians could convert other Jews. Students of Jewish literature and Kabbalah among the Christians defended their work with like contretemps. A conversion is always a defect, being a denunciation of the past. A study that leads to challenge of accepted tradition is fraught with danger when exposed. It would be simple enough to avoid such writings, but books like Portae Lucis have been written. There was a need to heal and to share the weight with the world. In the process of that, a spark of wisdom passed from one place to another. Out of its somber wrapping, that spark kindled new fire.
    It's time to take a look at some of the sparks and flames that have arisen out of the Kabbalah of old time to form the Qabalah we are examining now. We have looked at the Tree of Life in a study intended to familiarize and analyze. Now we will take a side trip into some forms of magick. Later we will look to more complex forms of Qabalah that may use the Tree of Life and may not.

Edited topics discussed in email:

Y. asked for thoughts about the Abramelin method. Here are some observations:

    Just raising one's blood pressure is not a viable solution. Inflame yourself, but accept any form of communication that will function, even casting lots. In the classic Abramelin method, geomancy (actually a variant sometimes called "foxmancy" -- letting animals or other natural occurrences leave marks in a smooth sand bed overnight. One African approach is to make little circles with the geomantic patterns in the sand, leaving bits of seeds and other wild food in the circles. When one comes back in the morning, the patterns show animal interest in some and not in others -- thus giving the divination data) was used with river sand, not direct vision.

    Scrying is the most helpful, but semi-automatic writing can substitute -- get yourself high with ritual and immediately set down to free-associate write.

    For meditation, you need simple patterns. Some elementary ritual like the LPBR and Tree work is good for pre-meditation -- alternating physical performance with pure passive visualization of those rituals to help integrate the motions into the visualization.

    The Journal is essential. There's no other way as effective in anchoring the experience as it goes along. It has the same effect as forcing a plant with nutrients and growing conditions.

Events Calendar for January 1999 e.v.

    The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its officers.

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