Liber 148 - The Soldier and the Hunchback

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object:Liber 148 - The Soldier and the Hunchback
THE SOLDIER AND THE HUNCHBACK:
! AND ?
_______________________________________________________________
Index
* Chapter I
* Chapter II
* Chapter III
* Chapter IV
* Chapter V
* Chapter VI
* Chapter VII
* Chapter VIII
* Chapter IX
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"Expect seven misfortunes from the cripple, and forty-two from the
one-eyed man; but when the hunchback comes, say 'Allah our aid.'"
ARAB PROVERB
I
Top
INQUIRY. Let us inquire in the first place: What is Scepticism? The
word means looking, questioning, investigating. One must pass by
contemptuously the Christian liar's gloss which interprets "sceptic"
as "mocker"; though in a sense it is true for him, since to inquire
into Christianity is assuredly to mock at it; but I am concerned to
intensify the etymological connotation in several respects. First, I
do not regard mere incredulity as necessary to the idea, though
credulity is incompatible with it. Incredulity implies a prejudice
in favour of a negative conclusion; and the true sceptic should be
perfectly unbiassed.
Second, I exclude "vital scepticism." What's the good of anyfink?
expects (as we used to learn about "nonne?") the answer, "Why
nuffink!" and again is prejudiced. Indolence is no virtue in a
questioner. Eagerness, intentness, concentration, vigilance --- all
these I include in the connotation of "sceptic." Such questioning as
has been called "vital scepticism" is but a device to avoid true
questioning, and therefore its very antithesis, the devil disguised
as an angel of light.
[Or "vice vers", friend, if you are a Satanist; 'tis a matter of
words --- words --- words. You may write "x" for "y" in your
equations, so long as you consistently write "y" for "x". They
remain unchanged --- and unsolved. Is not all our "knowledge" an
example of this fallacy of writing one unknown for another, and then
crowing like Peter's cock?]
I picture the true sceptic as a man eager and alert, his deep eyes
glittering like sharp swords, his hands tense with effort as he
asks, "What does it matter?"
I picture the false sceptic as a dude or popinjay, yawning, with
dull eyes, his muscles limp, his purpose in asking the question but
the expression of his slackness and stupidity.
This true sceptic is indeed the man of science; as Wells' "Moreau"
tells us. He has devised some means of answering his first question,
and its answer is another question. It is difficult to conceive of
any question, indeed, whose answer does not imply a thousand further
questions. So simple an inquiry as "Why is sugar sweet?" involves an
infinity of chemical researches, each leading ultimately to the
blank wall --- what is matter? and an infinity of physiological
researches, each (similarly) leading to the blank wall --- what is
mind?
Even so, the relation between the two ideas is unthinkable;
causality is itself unthinkable; it depends, for one thing, upon
experience --- and what, in God's name, is experience? Experience is
impossible without memory. What is memory? The mortar of the temple
of the ego, whose bricks are the impressions. And the ego? The sum
of our experience, may be. (I doubt it!) Anyhow, we have got values
of "y" and "z" for "x", and the values of "x" and "z" for "y" ---
all our equations are indeterminate; all our knowledge is relative,
even in a narrower sense than is usually implied by the statement.
Under the whip of the clown God, our performing donkeys the
philosophers and men of science run round and round in the ring;
they have amusing tricks: they are cleverly trained; but they get
nowhere.
I don't seem to be getting anywhere myself.
II
Tp
A fresh attempt. Let us look into the simplest and most certain of
all possible statements. "Thought exists", or if you will,
"Cogitatur".
Descartes supposed himself to have touched bed-rock with his
"Cogito," "ergo Sum."
Huxley pointed out the complex nature of this proposition, and that
it was an enthymeme with the premiss "Omnes sunt, qui cogitant"
suppressed. He reduced it to "Cogito;" or, to avoid the assumption
of an ego, "Cogitatur."
Examining more closely this statement, we may still cavil at its
form. We cannot translate it into English without the use of the
verb to be, so, that, after all, existence is implied. Nor do we
readily conceive that contemptuous silence is sufficient answer of
the further query, "By whom is it thought?" The Buddhist may find it
easy to image an act without an agent; I am not so clever. It may be
possible for a sane man; but I should like to know more about his
mind before I gave a final opinion.
But apart from purely formal objections, we may still inquire: Is
this "Cogitatur" true?
Yes; reply the sages; for to deny it implies thought; "Negatur" is
only a sub-section of "Cogitatur".
This involves, however, an axiom that the part is of the same nature
as the whole; or (at the very least) an axiom that "A" is "A".
Now, I do not wish to deny that "A" is "A", or may occasionally be
"A". But certainly "A is A" is a very different statement to our
original "Cogitatur".
The proof of "Cogitatur", in short, rests not upon itself but upon
the validity of our logic; and if by logic we mean (as we should
mean) the Code of the Laws of Thought, the irritating sceptic will
have many more remarks to make: for it now appears that the proof
that "thought exists" depends upon the truth of that which is
thought, to say no more.
We have taken "Cogitatur", to try and avoid the use of "esse;" but
"A is A" involves that very idea, and the proof is fatally flawed.
"Cogitatur" depends on "Est;" and there's no avoiding it.
III
Top
Shall we get on any better if we investigate this "Est" ---
Something is --- Existence is --- HB:Heh HB:Yod HB:Heh HB:Aleph
HB:Resh HB:Shin HB:Aleph HB:Heh HB:Yod HB:Heh HB:Aleph ?
What is Existence? The question is so fundamental that it finds no
answer. The most profound meditation only leads to an exasperating
sense of impotence. There is, it seems, no simple rational idea in
the mind which corresponds to the word.
It is easy of course to drown the question in definitions, leading
us to further complexity --- but
*
+ "Existence is the gift of Divine Providence,"
"Existence is the opposite of Non-Existence,"
do not help us much!
The plain "Existence is Existence" of the Hebrews goes farther. It
is the most sceptical of statements, in spite of its form. Existence
is just existence, and there's no more to be said about it; don't
worry! Ah, but there is more to be said about it! Though we search
ourselves for a thought to match the word, and fail, yet we have
Berkeley's perfectly convincing argument that (so far as we know it)
existence must mean "thinking existence" or "spiritual existence".
Here then we find our "Est" to imply "Cogitatur;" and Berkeley's
arguments are "irrefragable, yet fail to produce conviction" (Hume)
because the "Cogitatur;" as we have shown, implies "Est".
Neither of these ideas is simple; each involves the other. Is the
division between them in our brain a proof of the total incapacity
of that organ, or is there some flaw in our logic? For all depends
upon our logic; not upon the simple identity "A is A" only, but upon
its whole structure from the question of simple propositions,
enormously difficult from the moment when it occurred to the
detestable genius that invented "existential import" to consider the
matter, to that further complexity and contradiction, the syllogism.
IV
Top
"Thought is" appears then (in the worst case possible, denial) as
the conclusion of the premisses:
There is denial of thought.
(All) Denial of thought is thought.
Even formally, 'tis a clumsy monster. Essentially, it seems to
involve a great deal beyond our original statement. We compass
heaven and earth to make one syllogism; and when we have made it, it
is tenfold more the child of mystery than ourselves.
We cannot here discuss the whole problem of the validity (the
surface- question of the logical validity) of the syllogism; though
one may throw out the hint that the doctrine of distri buted middle
seems to assume a knowledge of a Calculus of Infinites which is
certainly beyond my own poor attainments, and hardly impregnable to
the simple reflection that all mathematics is conventional, and not
essential; relative, and not absolute.
We go deeper and deeper, then, it seems, from the One into the Many.
Our primary proposition depends no longer upon itself, but upon the
whole complex being of man, poor, disputing, muddle-headed man! Man
with all his limitations and ignorance; man --- man!
V
Top
We are of course no happier when we examine the Many, separately or
together. They converge and diverge, each fresh hill-to of
knowledge disclosing a vast land unexplored; each gain of power in
our telesces opening out new galaxies; each improvement in our
microscoes showing us life minuter and more incomprehensible. A
mystery of the mighty spaces between molecules; a mystery of the
ether-cushions that fend off the stars from collision! A mystery of
the fulness of things; a mystery of the emptiness of things! Yet, as
we go, there grows a sense, an instinct, a premonition --- what
shall I call it? --- that Being is One, and Thought is One, and Law
is One --- until we ask What is that One?
Then again we spin words --- words --- words. And we have got no
single question answered in any ultimate sense.
What is the moon made of?
Science replies "Green Cheese."
For our one moon we have now two ideas:
"Greenness," and "Cheese."
"Greenness" depends on the sunlight, and the eye, and a thousand
other things.
"Cheese" depends on bacteria and fermentation and the nature of the
cow.
"Deeper, even deeper, into the mire of things!"
Shall we cut the Gordian knot? shall we say "There is God"?
What, in the devil's name, is God?
If (with Moses) we picture Him as an old man showing us His back
parts, who shall blame us? The great Question --- "any" question is
the great question --- does indeed treat us thus cavalierly, the
disenchanted Sceptic is too prone to think!
Well, shall we define Him as a loving Father, as a jealous priest,
as a gleam of light upon the holy Ark? What does it matter? All
these images are of wood and stone, the wood and stone of our own
stupid brains! The Fatherhood of God is but a human type; the idea
of a human father conjoined with the idea of immensity. Two for One
again!
No combination of thoughts can be greater than the thinking brain
itself; all we can think of God or say of Him, so long as our words
really represent thoughts, is less than the whole brain which
thinks, and orders speech.
Very good; shall we proceed by denying Him all thinkable qualities,
as do the hea then? All we obtain is mere negation of thought.
Either He is unknowable, or He is less than we are. Then, too, that
which is unknowable is unknown; and "God" or "There is God" as an
answer to our question becomes as meaningless as any other.
Who are we, then?
We are Spencerian Agnostics, poor silly, damned Spencerian
Agnostics!
And there is an end of the matter.
VI
Top
It is surely time that we began to question the validity of some of
our data. So far our scepticism has not only knocked to pieces our
tower of thought, but rooted up the foundation-stone and ground it
into finer and more poisonous powder than that into which Moses
ground the calf. These golden Elohim! Our calf-heads that brought us
not out of Egypt, but into a darkness deeper and more tangible than
any darkness of the double Empire of Asar.
Hume put his little ? to Berkeley's God-!; Buddha his ? to the Vedic
Atman-! --- and neither Hume nor Buddha was baulked of his reward.
Ourselves may put ? to our own ? since we have found no ! to put it
to; and wouldn't it be jolly if our own second ? suddenly
straightened its back and threw its chest out and marched off as !?
Suppose then we accept our scepticism as having destroyed our
knowledge root and branch --- is there no limit to its action? Does
it not in a sense stultify itself? Having destroyed logic by logic
--- if Satan cast out Satan, how shall his kingdom stand?
Let us stand on the Mount, Saviours of the World that we are, and
answer "Get thee behind me Satan!" though refraining from quoting
texts or giving reasons.
Oho! says somebody; is Aleister Crowley here? --- Samson blinded and
bound, grinding corn for the Philistines!
Not at all, dear boy!
We shall put all the questions that we can put --- but we may find a
tower built upon a rock, against which the winds beat in vain.
Not what Christians call faith, be sure! But what (possibly) the
forgers of the Epistles --- those eminent mystics! --- meant by
faith. What I call Samadhi --- and as "faith without works is dead,"
so, good friends, Samadhi is all humbug unless the practitioner
shows the glint of its gold in his work in the world. If your mystic
becomes Dante, well; if Tennyson, a fig for his trances!
But how does this tower of Samadhi stand the assault of
Question-time?
Is not the idea of Samadhi just as dependent on all the other ideas
--- man, time, being, thought, logic? If I seek to explain Samadhi
by analogy, am I not often found talking as if we knew all about
Evolution, and Mathematics, and History? Complex and unscientific
studies, mere straws before the blast of our hunchback friend!
Well, one of the buttresses is just the small matter of common
sense.
The other day I was with Dorothy, and, as I foolishly imagined, very
cosy: for her sandwiches are celebrated. It was surely bad taste on
the part of Father Bernard Vaughan, and Dr. Torrey, and Ananda
Metteyya, and Mr. G. W. Foote, and Captain Fuller, and the ghost of
Immanuel Kant, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, and young Neuburg, to intrude.
But intrude they did; and talk! I never heard anything like it.
Every one with his own point of view; but all agreed that Dorothy
was non-existent, or if existent, a most awful specimen, that her
buns were stale, and her tea stewed; "ergo," that I was having a
very poor time of it. Talk! Good God! But Dorothy kept on quietly
and took no notice; and in the end I forgot about them.
Thinking it over soberly, I see now that very likely they were quite
right: I can't prove it either way. But as a mere practical man, I
intend taking the steamer --- for my sins I am in Gibraltar --- back
to Dorothy at the earliest possible moment. Sandwiches of bun and
German sausage may be vulgar and even imaginary --- it's the taste I
like. And the more I munch, the more complacent I feel, until I go
so far as to offer my critics a bite.
This sounds in a way like the "Interior Certainly" of the common or
garden Christian; but there are differences.
The Christian insists on notorious lies being accepted as an
essential part of his (more usually her) system; I, on the contrary,
ask for facts, for observation. Under Scepticism, true, one is just
as much a house of cards as the other; but only in the philosophical
sense.
Practically, Science is is true; and Faith is foolish.
Practically, 3 x 1 = 3 is the truth; and 3 x 1 = 1 is a lie; though,
sceptically, both statements may be false or unintelligible.
Practically, Franklin's method of obtaining fire from heaven is
better than that of Prometheus or Elijah. I am now writing by the
light that Franklin's discovery enabled men to use.
Practically, "I concentrated my mind upon a white radiant triangle
in whose centre was a shining eye, for 22 minutes and 10 seconds, my
attention wandering 45 times" is a scientific and valuable
statement. "I prayed fervently to the Lord for the space of many
days" means anything or nothing. Anybody who cares to do so may
imitate my experiment and compare his result with mine. In the
latter case one would always be wondering what "fervently" meant and
who "the Lord" was, and how many days made "many."
My claim, too, is more modest than the Christian's. He (usually she)
knows more about my future than is altoge ther pleasant; I claim
nothing absolute from my Samadhi --- I know only too well the
worthlessness of single-handed observations, even on so simple a
matter as a boiling- point determination! --- and as for his
(usually her) future, I content myself with mere common sense about
the probable end of a fool.
So that after all I keep my scepticism intact - and I keep my
Samadhi intact. The one balances the other; I care nothing for the
vulgar brawling of these two varlets of my mind!
VII
Tp
If, however, you would really like to know what might be said on the
soldierly side of the question, I shall endeavour to oblige.
It is necessary if a question is to be intelligibly put that the
querent should be on the same plane as the quesited.
Answer is impossible if you ask: Are round squares triangular? or Is
butter virtuous? or How many ounces go to the shilling? for the
"questions" are not really questions at all.
So if you ask me Is Samadhi real? I reply: First, I pray you,
establish a connection between the terms. What do you mean by
Samadhi?
There is a physiological (or pathological; never mind now!) state
which I call Samadhi; and that state is as real - in relation to man
- as sleep, or intoxication, or death.
Philosophically, we may doubt the existence of all of these; but we
have no grounds for discriminating between them - the Academic
Scepticism is a wholesale firm, I hope! - and practically, I
challenge you to draw valid distinctions.
All these are states of the consciousness of man; and if you seek to
destroy one, all fall together.
VIII
Tp
I must, at the risk of appearing to digress, insist upon this
distinction between philosohical and practical points of view, or
(in Qabalistic language) between Kether and Malkuth.
In private conversation I find it hard - almost impossible - to get
peole to understand what seems to me so very simple a point. I
shall try to make it exceptionally clear.
A boot is an Illusion.
A hat is an illusion.
"Therefore," a boot is a hat.
So argue my friends, not distri buting the middle term.
But this argue I.
"Therefore" (though it is not a syllogism), all boots and hats are
illusions.
I add:
To the man in Kether no illusions matter.
"Therefore:" To the man in Kether neither boots nor hats matter.
In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and
hats.
You, they say, claim to be a man in Kether (I don't). Why then, do
you not wear boots on your head and hats on your feet?
I can only answer that I the man in Kether ('tis but an argument) am
out of all relation as much with feet and heads as with boots and
hats. But why should I (from my exalted pinnacle) stoop down and
worry the headed and footed gentleman in Malkuth, who after all
doesn't exist for me, by these drastic alterations in his toilet?
There is no distinction whatever; I might easily put the boots on
his shoulders, with his head on one foot and the hat on the other.
In short, why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do
have insane ideas about the universe?
Very good, say my friends, unabashed, then why not stick to that?
Why glorify Spanish gipsies when you have married a clergyman's
daughter?
Why go about proclaiming that you can get as good fun for
eighteenpence as usually costs men a career?
Ah! let me introduce you to the man in Tiphereth; that is, the man
who is trying to raise his consciousness from Malkuth to Kether.
This Tiphereth man is in a devil of a hole! He knows theoretically
all about the Kether point of view (or thinks he does) and
practically all about the Malkuth point of view. Consequently he
goes about contradicting Malkuth; he refuses to allow Malkuth to
obsess his thought. He keeps on crying out that there is no
difference between a goat and a God, in the hope of hypnotising
himself (as it were) into that perception of their identity, which
is his (partial and incorrect) idea of how things look from Kether.
This man performs great magic; very strong medicine. He does really
find gold on the midden and skeletons in pretty girls.
In Abiegnus the Sacred Mountain of the Rosicrucians the Postulant
finds but a coffin in the central shrine; yet that coffin contains
Christian Rosencreutz who is dead and is alive for evermore and hath
the keys of Hell and of Death.
Ay! your Tiphereth man, child of Mercy and Justice, looks deeper
than the skin!
But he seems a ridiculous object enough both to the Malkuth man and
to the Kether man.
Still, he's the most interesting man there is; and we all must pass
through that stage before we get our heads really clear, the
Kether-vision above the Clouds that encircle the mountain Abiegnus.
IX
Top
Running and returning, like the Cherubim, we may now resume our
attempt to drill our hunchback friend into a presentable soldier.
The digression will not have been all digression, either; for it
will have thrown a deal of light on the question of the limitations
of scepticism.
We have questioned the Malkuth point of view; it appears absurd, be
it agreed. But the Tiphereth position is unshaken; Tiphereth needs
no telling that Malkuth is absurd. When we turn our artillery
against Tiphereth, that too crumbles; but Kether frowns above us.
Attack Kether, and it falls; but the Yetziratic Malkuth is still
there .... until we reach Kether of Atziluth and the Infinite Light,
and Space, and Nothing.
So then we retire up the path, fighting rear-guard actions; at every
moment a soldier is slain by a hunchback; but as we retire there is
always a soldier just by us.
Until the end. The end? Buddha thought the supply of hunchbacks
infinite; but why should not the soldiers themselves be infinite in
number?
However that may be, here is the point; it takes a moment for a
hunchback to kill his man, and the farther we get from our base the
longer it takes. You may crumble to ashes the dream-world of a boy,
as it were, between your fingers; but before you can bring the
physical universe tumbling about a man's ears he requires to drill
his hunchbacks so devilish well that they are terribly like soldiers
themselves. And a question capable of shaking the consciousness of
Samadhi could, I imagine, give long odds to one of Frederick's
grenadiers.
It is useless to attack the mystic by asking him if he is quite sure
Samadhi is good for his poor health; 'tis like asking the huntsman
to be very careful, please, not to hurt the fox.
The ultimate Question, the one that really knocks Samadhi to pieces,
is such a stupendous Idea that it is far more of a ! than all
previous !'s whatever, for all its ? form.
And the name of that Question is Nibbana.
Take this matter of the soul.
When Mr. Judas McCabbage asks the Man in the Street why he believes
in a soul, the Man stammers out that he has always heard so;
naturally McCabbage has no difficulty in proving to him by
biological methods that he has no soul; and with a sunny smile each
passes on his way.
But McCabbage is wasted on the philosopher whose belief in a soul
rests on introspection; we must have heavier metal; Hume will serve
our turn, may be.
But Hume in his turn becomes perfectly futile, pitted against the
Hindu mystic, who is in constant intense enjoyment of his new-found
Atman. It takes a Buddha-gun to knock "his" castle down.
Now the ideas of McCabbage are banal and dull; those of Hume are
live and virile; there is a joy in them greater than the joy of the
Man in the Street. So too the Buddha-thought, Anatta, is a more
splendid conception than the philosopher's Dutch-doll-like Ego, or
the rational artillery of Hume.
This weapon, too, that has destroyed our lesser, our illusionary
universes, ever revealing one more real, shall we not wield it with
divine ecstasy? Shall we not, too, perceive the inter-dependence of
the Questions and the Answers, the necessary connection of the one
with the other, so that (just as 0 x is an indefinite) we destroy
the absolutism of either ? or ! by their alternation and balance,
until in our series ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ... ! ? ! ? ... we care nothing as
to which may prove the final term, any single term being so
negligible a quantity in relation to the vastness of the series? Is
it not a series of geometrical progression, with a factor positive
and incalculably vast?
In the light of the whole process, then, we perceive that there is
no absolute value in the swing of the pendulum, thought its shaft
leng then, its rate grow slower, and its sweep wider at every swing.
What should interest us is the consideration of the Point from which
it hangs, motionless at the height of things! We are unfavourably
placed to observe this, desperately clinging as we are to the bob of
the pendulum, sick with our senseless swinging to and fro in the
abyss!
We must climb up the shaft to reach that point --- but --- wait one
moment! How obscure and subtle has our simile become! Can we attach
any true meaning to the phrase? I doubt it, seeing what we have
taken for the limits of the swing. True, it may be that at the end
the swing is always 360 so that the !-point and the ?-point
coincide; but that is not the same thing as having no swing at all,
unless we make kinematics identical with statics.
What is to be done? How shall such mysteries be uttered?
Is this how it is that the true Path of the Wise is said to lie in a
totally different plane from all his advance in the path of
Knowledge, and of Trance? We have already been obliged to take the
Fourth Dimension to illustrate (if not explain) the nature of
Samadhi.
Ah, say the adepts, Samadhi is not the end , but the beginning. You
must regard Samadhi as the normal state of mind which enables you to
begin your researches, just as waking is the state from which you
rise to Samadhi, sleep the state from which you rose to waking. And
only from Sammasamadhi --- continuous trance of the right kind ---
can you rise up as it were on tiptoe and peer through the clouds
unto the mountains.
Now of course it is really awfully decent of the adepts to take all
that trouble over us, and to put it so nicely and clearly. All we
have to do, you see, is to acquire Sammasamadhi, and then rise on
tiptoe. Just so!
But there there are the other adepts. Hard at him! Little brother,
he says, let us rather consider that as the pendulum swings more and
more slowly every time, it must ultimately stp, as soon as the shaft
is of infinite length. Good! then it isn't a pendulum at all but a
Mahalingam --- The Mahalingam of Shiva ("Namo Shivaya namaha Aum!")
which is all I ever thought it was; all you have to do is to keep
swinging hard --- I know it's hook-swinging! --- and you get there
in the End. Why trouble to swing? First, because you are bound to
swing, whether you like it or not; second, because your attention is
thereby distracted from those lumbar muscles in which the hook is so
very firmly fixed; third, because after all it's a ripping good
game; fourth, because you want to get on, and even to seem to
progress is better than standing still. A treadmill is admittedly
good exercise.
True, the question, "Why become an Aarhat?" should precede, "How
become an Arahat?" but an unbiassed man will easily cancel the first
question with "Why not?" --- the How is not so easy to get rid of.
Then, from the standpoint of the Arahat himself, perhaps this "Why
did I become an Arahat?" and "How did I become an Arahat?" have but
a single solution!
In any case, we are wasting our time --- we are as ridiculous with
our Arahats as Herod the Tetrarch with his peacocks! We pose Life
with the question Why? and the first answer is: To obtain the
Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
To attach meaning to this statement we must obtain that Knowledge
and Conversation: and when we have done that, we may proceed to the
next Question. It is no good asking it now.
"There are purse-proud, penniless ones who stand at the door of the
tavern, and revile the guests."
We attach little importance to the Reverend Out-at-Elbows,
thundering in Bareboards Chapel that the rich man gets no enjoyment
from his wealth.
Good, then. Let us obtain the volume entitled "The Book of the
Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage"; or the magical writings of
that holy illuminated Man of God, Captain Fuller, and carry out
fully their instructions.
And only when we have succeeded, when we have put a colossal !
against our vital ? need we inquire whether after all the soldier is
not going to develo spinal curvature.
Let us take the first step; let us sing:
* "I do not ask to see
The distant path; one step's enough for me."
But (you will doubtless say) I pith your ? itself with another ?:
Why question life at all? Why not remain "a clean-living Irish
gentleman" content with his handicap, and contemptuous of card and
pencil? Is not the Buddha's goad "Everything is sorrow" little
better than a currish whine? What do I care for old age, disease,
and death? I'm a man, and a Celt at that. I spit on your snivelling
Hindu prince, emasculate with debauchery in the first place, and
asceticism in the second. A weak, dirty, paltry cur, sir, your
Gautama!
Yes, I think I have no answer to that. The sudden apprehension of
some vital catastrophe may have been the exciting cause of my
conscious devotion to the attainment of Adeptship --- but surely the
capacity was there, inborn. Mere despair and desire can do little;
anyway, the first impulse of fear was the passing spasm of an hour;
the magnetism of the path itself was the true lure. It is as foolish
to ask me "Why do you adep?" as to ask God "Why do you pardon?"
"C'est son mtier."
I am not so foolish as to think that my doctrine can ever gain the
ear of the world. I expect that ten centuries hence the "nominal
Crowleians" will be as pestilent and numerous a body as the "nominal
Christians" are to-day; for (at present) I have been able to devise
no mechanism for excluding them. Rather, perhaps, should I seek to
find them a niche in the shrine, just as Hinduism provides alike for
those capable of the Upanishads and those whose intelligence hardly
reaches to the Tantras. In short, one must abandon the reality of
religion for a sham, so that the religion may be universal enough
for those few who are capable of its reality to nestle to its
breast, and nurse their nature on its starry milk. But we
anticipate!
My message is then twofold; to the greasy "bourgeois" I preach
discontent; I shock him, I stagger him, I cut away earth from under
his feet, I turn him upside down, I give him hashish and make him
run amok, I twitch his buttocks with the red-hot tongs of my
Sadistic fancy -- until he feels uncomfortable.
But to the man who is already as uneasy as St. Lawrence on his
silver grill, who feels the spirit stir in him, even as a woman
feels, and sickens at, the first leap of the babe in her womb, to
him I bring the splendid vision, the perfume and the glory, the
Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. And to
whosoever hath attained that height will I put a further Question,
announce a further Glory.
It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am bound to deliver this
elementary Message.
* "Man has two sides; one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her."
We must pardon Browning his bawdy jest; for his truth is ower true!
But it is your own fault if you are the world instead of the
beloved; and only see of me what Moses saw of God!
It is disgusting to have to spend one's life jetting dirt in the
face of the British public in the hope that in washing it they may
wash off the acrid grease of their commercialism, the saline streaks
of their hypocritical tears, the putrid perspiration of their
morality, the dribbling slobber of their sentimentality and their
religion. And they don't wash it! ...
But let us take a less unpleasing metaphor, the whip! As some
schoolboy poet repeatedly wrote, his rimes as poor as Edwin Arnold,
his metre as erratic and as good as Francis Thompson, his good sense
and frank indecency a match for Browning!
* "Can't be helped; must be done ---
So ..."
Nay! 'tis a bad, bad rime.
And only after the scourge that smites shall come the rod that
consoles, if I may borrow a somewhat daring simile from Abdullah
Haji of Shiraz and the twenty-third Psalm.
Well, I would much prefer to spend my life at the rod; it is
wearisome and loathsome to be constantly flogging the tough hide of
Britons, whom after all I love. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son that He receiveth." I shall really be glad
if a few of you will get it over, and come and sit on daddy's knee!
The first step is the hardest; make a start, and I will soon set the
hunchback lion and the soldier unicorn fighting for your crown. And
they shall lie down together at the end, equally glad, equally
weary; while sole and sublime that crown of thine (brother!) shall
glitter in the frosty Void of the abyss, its twelve stars filling
that silence and solitude with a music and a motion that are more
silent and more still than they; thou shalt sit throned on the
Invisible, thine eyes fixed upon That which we call Nothing, because
it is beyond Everything attainable by thought, or trance, thy right
hand gripping the azure rod of Light, thy left hand clasped upon the
scarlet scourge of Death; thy body girdled with a snake more
brilliant than the sun, its name Eternity; thy mouth curved moonlike
in a smile, in the invisible kiss of Nuit, our Lady of the Starry
Abodes; thy body's electric flesh stilled by sheer might to a
movement closed upon itself in the controlled fury of Her love ---
nay, beyond all these Images art thou (little brother!) who art
passed from I and Thou, and He unto That which hath no Name, no
Image. ...
Little brother, give me thy hand; for the first step is hard.
ALEISTER CROWLEY.

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OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

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Liber 148 - The Soldier and the Hunchback

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IN CHAPTERS [6/6]

5 Occultism
1 Thelema

6 Aleister Crowley

3 Magick Without Tears
2 Liber ABA

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Soldier and the Hunchback ! and ? The Eqx.
I, i.

1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
31:Now this is a very difficult question, and raises the much larger question as to the value of any testimony. Every possible thought has been doubted at some time or another, except the thought which can only be expressed by a note of interrogation, since to doubt that thought asserts it. (For a full discussion see "The Soldier and the Hunchback," "Equinox," I.) But apart from this deep-seated philosophic doubt there is the practical doubt of every day. The popular phrase, "to doubt the evidence of one's senses," shows us that that evidence is normally accepted; but a man of science does nothing of the sort. He is so well aware that his senses constantly deceive him, that he invents elaborate instruments to correct them. And he is further aware that the Universe which he can directly perceive through sense, is the minutest fraction of the Universe which he knows indirectly.
32:For example, four-fifths of the air is composed of nitrogen. If anyone were to bring a bottle of nitrogen into this room it would be exceedingly difficult to say what it was; nearly all the tests that one could apply to it would be negative. His senses tell him little or nothing.

1.27 - Structure of Mind Based on that of Body, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It may be no more than a personal fancy, but I think Allan Bennett's translation of the term, "Recollection," is as near as one can get in English. One can strain the meaning slightly to include Re-collection, to imply the ranging of one's facts, and the fitting of them into an organized structure. The term "sati" suggests an identification of Being with Knowledge see The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ? (Equinox I, 1). So far as it applies to the Magical Memory, it lays stress on some such expedient, very much as is explained in Liber Thisarb (Magick, pp. 415 - 422).
But is it not a little strange that "The Abomination of Desolation should be set up in the Holy Place," as it were? Why should the whole-bearted search for Truth and Beauty disclose such hateful and such hideous elements as necessary components of the Absolute Perfection?

1.29 - What is Certainty?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Once more what a book that is: I never realized it until now! it says see that double page at the onset, one with "?" and the other with "!" alone upon the blank. Moreover you should read the long essay The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ? in the first volume and number of The Equinox.
But every one of those rather significant, nich wahr? slides into a rhapsody of exaltation, a dithyramb, a Paean.*[AC35] No good here. For what you want is a penny plain pedestrian prose Probability-Percentage. You want to know what the Odds are when I say "certain."

1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The result of all this naturally is that the mind very rapidly becomes a discredited instrument, and one attains to a totally different and much more exalted type of mind, and the same destructive criticism which one applied to the original consciousness applies equally to this higher consciousness, and one gets to one higher still which is again destroyed. In The Equinox, Vol. I there is an essay called "The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ?" In Liber Aleph too there are several chapters about attainment by what is called the Method of Ladders.[163]
All these operations are equally valid and equally invalid, and the result of this is that the whole subject of Yoga leads to constantly increasing confusion. The fineness of the analytical instrument seems to defeat its own purpose and it is perhaps because of that confession that I have always felt in my deepest consciousness that the method of Magick is on the whole less dangerous than that of Yoga. This is particularly the case when discussing these matters with a Western mind.

3.00 - The Magical Theory of the Universe, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The reader should consult The Soldier and the Hunchback in
Equinox I (1), and Konx Om Pax.

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