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.

Jules Engel - Train Landscape (1974)

A collection of surviving film scenes with Jane Wolfe

A collection of surviving film scenes with Jane Wolfe, lifelong student of Crowley, and Phyllis Seckler's A.'.A.'. initiator:

Film excerpts in this reel:

A Lad From Old Ireland (1910)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234071/

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0008499

Why Change Your Wife? (1920)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011865

Under Strange Flags (1937)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029710

Scans From Aleister Crowley's The Equinox

All original scans from first editions of The Equinox, learn about the process here.
Please consider supporting this project by either donating directly or buying merchandise created from the scans.
3.1 is complete, 1.1-10 are in the works and will be released as they are completed.
"low" = 150 dpi, suitable for reading, "high" = 600 dpi, suitable for printing.

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Amrita #12

1 - Carl Jung - The Anima
2 - Dead Can Dance - The Promised Womb 
3 - Cropcircle - Blood From the Air 
4 - Othila - Infini 
5 - Druhb - Are You Shivering?
6 - Tactile - The Boy Who Loved Trees

Amrit (Sanskrit, IAST: am?ta) or Amata (Pali) is a word that literally means "immortality" and is often referred to in texts as nectar. Amrita is etymologically related to the Greek ambrosia and carries the same meaning.

Entangling Conscious Agents - Donald Hoffman

Shigeo Fukuda - Mona Lisa’s 100 Smiles

"The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing…"
— 'What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell' by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. 

Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core by Michael Shermer

I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism.

Often I am asked if I have ever encountered something that I could not explain. What my interlocutors have in mind are not bewildering enigmas such as consciousness or U.S. foreign policy but anomalous and mystifying events that suggest the existence of the paranormal or supernatural. My answer is: yes, now I have.

Read More...

Pacino di Bonaguida - The Crucifixion (circa 1315–20)

The perfect alchemical symbol, reflected as the ego surrenders on the tree. 

"The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." Acts 5:30

“Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.”

- Albert Pike: Morals and Dogma : Scottish Rite in Freemasonry

BLK Lecture Series - Michael Bertiaux on the Ophidian Shiva-Set-Saturn

From the “The Return of the Sorcerer” (featuring the late great Vincent Price) from the TV show The Night Gallery. This episode is an adaption of the classic Clark Ashton Smith horror short story of the same name and is a part of the Cthulhu/Elder God Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. The giant painting is from Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck.

Amrita #11

Crowleymass Greetings!

01 Halo Manash - Hänesä Henget Eläwät
02 SONM - true filling
03 TUU -  Shiva Descending
04 Arktau Eos - Ioh-Maera
05 Black Sun - Hymn To Lucifer
06 Coph Nia - Credo V
07 Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir - Chakrasamvara
08 English Heretic - Vaughan to Lose
09 Mother Destruction - Beyond The Ka
10 Bobby Beausoleil - Lucifer Rising-The Light Bearer
10 Aleister Crowley - When Celia Farts

Amrit (Sanskrit, IAST: am?ta) or Amata (Pali) is a word that literally means "immortality" and is often referred to in texts as nectar. Amrita is etymologically related to the Greek ambrosia and carries the same meaning.

"Hello," Said the Stick by Michael Swanwick

Arms races, by their nature, tend to escalate. But the biggest leaps aren't necessarily the most dramatic….

"Hello," said the stick.

The soldier stopped, and looked around. He did not touch the hilt of his sword, but he adjusted his stance so he could reach it quickly, if need be. But there was nothing to be seen. The moors stretched flat and empty for miles about. "Who said that?"

"I did. Down here."

"Ah. I see." The soldier poked gingerly at the stick with his foot. "Some sort of radio device, eh? I've heard of such. Where are you speaking from?"

"I'm right here. The stick. I'm from off-planet. They can make things like me there."

"Can they, now? Well that's interesting, I suppose."

"Pick me up," said the stick. "Take me with you."

"Why?"

"Because I make an excellent weapon."

"No, I mean what's in it for you?"

The stick paused. "You're smarter than you look."

"Thanks. I think."

"OK, here's the deal. I'm a symbiotic mechanism. I was designed to be totally helpless without a human partner. Pick me up, throw an acorn in the air, take a swing at it, and I can shift my weight so you hit it a country mile. Leave me here and I can't budge an inch."

"Why would they build you like that?"

"So I'd be a good and faithful tool. And I will. I'll be the best quarterstaff you ever had. Try me and see."

"How do I know you won't take over my brain?" the soldier asked suspiciously. "I've heard offworld wizards can make devices that do things like that."

"They're called technicians, not wizards. And that sort of technology is strictly prohibited on planetary surfaces. You have nothing to worry about."

"Even so … it's nothing I'd want to chance."

The stick sighed. "Tell me something. What's your rank? Are you a general? A field commander?"

"Tramping alone across the moors like this? Naw, I'm just a gallowglass—a mercenary and a foot soldier."

"Then what have you got to lose?"

The soldier laughed aloud. He bent to pick up the stick. Then he put it down again. Then he picked it up.

"See?"

"Well, I don't mind telling you that takes a weight off my mind."

"I could use a change of scenery. Let's go. We can talk along the way." The soldier resumed his stroll down the dirt track. He swung the stick lightly back and forth before him, admiring how it lopped off the heads of thistles, while deftly sidestepping the sedge-roses. "So you're off to join the Iron Duke in his siege of Port Morningstar, are you?" the stick remarked conversationally.

"How'd you know that?"

"Oh, one hears things, being a stick. Fly on the wall, and all that."

"It's an unfamiliar figure of speech, but I catch your meaning. Who do you think's going to win? The Iron Duke or the Council of Seven?"

"It's a close thing, by all accounts. But the Iron Duke has the advantage of numbers. That always counts for something. If I had to bet money, I'd say you chose employers well."

"That's good. I like being on the winning side. Less chance of dying, for one thing."

They'd progressed several miles across the moors when the Sun began to set. The soldier laid the stick aside and set a snare for supper. By the time he'd pitched a tent, made camp, and cut peat for a fire, he'd caught a rabbit. He roasted it slow and, because he had a fondness for drumsticks, ate all six legs first, along with three small bunyips, boiled with a pinch of salt from a tin. Like many an old campaigner, he ate in silence, giving the food his undivided attention.

"Well," he said when he was full and in the mood for conversation again. "What were you doing out here in the middle of this godforsaken wilderness?"

The stick had been stuck into the earth on the opposite side of the campfire, so that it stood upright. "I was dropped by a soldier," it said, "much like yourself. He was in pretty bad shape at the time. I doubt he's still alive."

The soldier frowned. "You're not exactly standard gear."

"No, I'm not. By compact, planetside wars are fought with primitive weaponry. It was found that wars were almost as environmentally destructive as the internal combustion engine. So…"

"Internal combustion engine?"

"Never mind. It's complicated. The point I was trying to make, though, is that the technology is there, even if it's not supposed to be used. So they cheat. Your side, the other side. Everybody cheats."

"How so?" "That sword of yours, for example. Take it out, let's get a look at it."

He drew the sword. Firelight glimmered across its surface.

"Tungsten-ceramic-titanium alloy. Self-sharpening, never rusts. You could slam it against a granite boulder and it wouldn't break. Am I right?"

"It's a good blade. I couldn't say what it was made of."

"Trust me on this one."

"Still … you're a lot fancier than this old sword of mine. It can't talk, for one thing."

"It's possible," said the stick, "that the Council of Seven is, out of desperation, pushing the envelope a little, these days."

"Now that's a figure of speech I've neither heard before nor can comprehend."

"It means simply that it's likely they're using weapons rather more sophisticated than is strictly speaking allowed by the Covenants of Warfare. There's a lot riding on this siege. The Iron Duke has put everything he has into it. If he were defeated, then the worst the Council of Seven could expect would be sanctions and a fine. So long as they don't use tac-nukes or self repro­gramming viruses, the powers that be won't invoke their right to invade."

"Tac-nukes or self-reprogramming viruses?"

"Again, it's complicated. But I see you're yawning. Why don't you bank the fire and turn in? Get some sleep," said the stick. "We can talk more in the morning."

But in the morning, the soldier didn't feel much like talking. He packed his gear, shouldered the stick, and set off down the road with far less vigor than he had the day before. On this, the stick did not comment.

At noon, the soldier stopped for lunch. He let his pack slip from his shoulders and leaned the stick against it. Then he rummaged within for the left-over rabbit, only to make a face and thrust it away from him. "Phaw!" he said. "I cannot remember when I felt so weak! I must be coming down with something."

"Do you think so?" the stick asked.

"Aye. And I'm nauseated, and I've got the sweats as well."

The soldier wiped his forehead with his hand. It came back bloody.

"Chort!" he swore. "What's wrong with me?" "Radiation poisoning, I expect. I operate off a plutonium battery."

"It's … you … You knew this would happen to me." Unsteadily, he stood, and drew his sword. He struck at the stick with all his might. Sparks flew, but it was not damaged. Again and again he struck, until his strength was gone. His eyes filled with tears. "Oh, foul and treacherous stick, to kill a man so!"

"Is this crueler than hacking a man to death with a big knife? I don't see how. But it's not necessary for you to die."

"No?"

"No. If you grab your gear and hurry, you just might make it to the Iron Duke's camp in time. The medics there can heal you-antiradiation treatments aren't proscribed by the Protocols. And, to tell you the truth, you do more damage to the Iron Duke's cause alive and using up his personnel and resources than you do neatly dead in the moorlands. Go! Now!"

With a curse, the soldier kicked the stick as hard as he could. Then he grabbed his pack and shambled off.

It was not long before he disappeared over the horizon.

A day passed. Then another.

A young man came trotting down the dirt track. He carried a sword and a light pack. He had the look of a mercenary.

"Hello," said the stick.

This rotating paper volvelle, which was used as a cipher disc. It is found in Johannes Trithemius’s cryptographic book Polygraphiae, this copy of which dates to 1561.

"But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself, into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously… "                                                                 — Julio Cortázar   

Amrita #10

01 Current 93 - In An English Garden
02 Adrian Lane - Abandoned Equations  
03 Relic Radiation - To The Pure All Things Are Pure  
04 Luigi Rubino - Fragments   
05 Endless Melancholy - Stillness Mixed With Stillness
06 Moral - Dance Of The Dolls  
07 Current 93 - It Is Time, Only Time
08 Labradford - Listening in Depth   
09 Tor Lundvall - Yule Song
10 Current 93 - Epilogue 

Amrit (Sanskrit, IAST: amṛta) or Amata (Pali) is a word that literally means "immortality" and is often referred to in texts as nectar. Amṛta is etymologically related to the Greek ambrosia and carries the same meaning.

"We may idealize freedom but when it comes to our habits we are completely enslaved"  - Sogyal Rinpoche

Fernand Pierre - Marriage of Agwe and La Sirene

Adriaen Isenbrant - Christ Crowned with Thorns (Ecce Homo), and the Mourning Virgin

Remember!

No-one represents Thelema!

The O.T.O. does not represent Thelema!

 All self-appointed experts do not represent Thelema!

The Thelema Facebook groups do not represent Thelema!

People who write books about Crowley do not represent Thelema!

Think for yourself!

Believe no-one! 

Trust yourself!

Enflame yourself!

Every man and every woman is a star.

Avalokitheswara

Stephan Sinding - Adoration

Tim Wallace-Murphy Lectures on Hidden Wisdom

On Monday, May 10th, 2010, Tim Wallace-Murphy lectured at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York. The lecture was based on his book Hidden Wisdom: Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.

“To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is Magick. To stop the mind altogether. That is Yoga. ”

- Aleister Crowley

Jean Delville - L'idole de la Perversité

Animation by Pioneering German Dada Filmmaker Walter Ruttmann (1920s)

Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972)

Vsevolod Maksimovich - Banquet

Valentin Serov - 1902

Leonora Carrington - Brujas Juegan Al Cubilete

Graham Sutherland - Cray Fields

Charles Courtney Curran - The cobweb dance

Philipp Otto Runge - The Great Morning

Monika Meglić - Inanna Ishtar

Luca Giordano - The Goddess Flora

Myth, in its deep structure as well as in its superficial content, is about this compound relation between body/mind and word/world. It is metaphoric, not in the sense that is uses what we call ‘figures of speech’, mere rhetorical devices, but in the root sense of the word: 'carrying across’ the convenient boundaries we establish between sexes, seasons, species and stars. This metaphoric leakage is not consciously contrived, nor is it peculiar to myth; it penetrates, in the act, everything we do, all the sense we make- even in the most narrowly specialized branch of science. Our being-in-the-world is itself a continuous process of two-way criss-crossing between ourselves and the world which cannot help being metaphoric, so in Emerson’s words, 'The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.’
                                                               
                                                                      — David Maclagan

Pages from Carl Jung’s The Red Book: Liber Novus