During this walk across Spain, I had much leisure for meditation. I was pledged to do my work in the world, and that meant my becoming a public character and one sure to arouse controversy. I thought out my plan of campaign during this walk. I decided first of all, that the most important point was never to forget that I was a gentleman and keep my honour the more spotless that I was assuming a position whose professors were rarely well born, more rarely well bred, hardly ever sincere, and still less frequently honest even in the most ordinary sense of the word.

It seemed to me that my first duty was to prove to the world that I was not teaching Magick for money. I promised myself always to publish my books on an actual loss on the cost of production --- never to accept a farthing for any form of instruction, giving advice, or any other service whose performance depended on my magical attainments. I regarded myself as having sacrificed my career and my fortune for initiation, and that the reward was so stupendous that it made the price pitifully mean, save that, like the widow's mite, it was all I had. I was therefore the wealthiest man in the world, and the least I could do was to bestow the inestimable treasure upon my poverty-stricken fellow men.

I made it also a point of absolute honour never to commit myself to any statement that I could not prove in the same sense as a chemist can prove the law of combining weights. Not only would I be careful to avoid deceiving people, but I would do all in my power to prevent them deceiving themselves. This meant my declaring war on the spiritualists and even the theosophists, though I agreed with much of Blavatsky's teachings, as uncompromisingly as I had done on Christianity.

I further resolved to uphold the dignity of Magick by pressing into its service science and philosophy, as well as the noblest English that I could command, and to present it in such a form as would of itself command respect and attention. I would do nothing cheap: I would be content with nothing second rate.

I thought it also a point of honesty not to pretend to be "better" than I was. I would avoid concealing my faults and foibles. I would have no one accept me on false pretences. I would not compromise with conventionality; even in cases where as an ordinary man of the world, it would have been natural to do so. In this connection there was also the point that I was anxious to prove that spiritual progress did not depend on religious or moral codes, but was like any other science. Magick would yield its secrets to the infidel and the libertine, just as one does not have to be a churchwarden in order to discover a new kind of orchid. There are, of course, certain virtues necessary to the Magician; but they are of the same order as those which make a successful chemist. Idleness, carelessness, drunkenness; the like interfere with success in any serious business, but sound theology and adherence to the code of Hampstead as against that of Hyderabad are only important if the man's body may suffer if his views are erroneous or his conscience reliable.

The conclusion of my meditations was that I ought to make a Magical Retirement as soon as the walk was over. I owed it to myself and to mankind to prove formally that the formulae of initiation would work at will. I could not ask people to experiment with my methods until I had assured myself that they were sufficient. When I looked back on my career, I found it hard to estimate the importance of the part played by such circumstances as solitude and constant communication with nature. I resolved to see whether by application of my methods, purged from all inessentials and understood in the light of common-sense physiology, psychology and anthropology, I could achieve in a place like Paris, within the period of the average man's annual holiday, what ad come as the climax of so many years of adventure. I also felt it proper to fit myself for the task which I had undertaken in publishing The Equinox, by fortifying myself with as much magical force as I might be able to invoke. The result of this resolve will appear in its proper place.

Our short spell of rest at Burgo de Osma sufficed me to collect in my mind the numberless conclusions of the very varied trains of thought which had occupied my mind during our fortnight's tramp. They shaped themselves into a conscious purpose. I knew myself to be on the brink of resuming my creative work in a way that I had never yet done. Till now I had written what was given me by the Holy Ghost. Everything I did was sui generis and had no conscious connection with any other outburst of my genius; but I understood that from this time on I should find myself writing with a sense of responsibility, that my work would be coherent, each item (however complete in itself) an essential part of a pyramid, a monument whose orientation and proportions should proclaim my purpose. I should do nothing in future that was not as definitely directed to the execution of my true will as every step through Spain was taken with the object of reaching Madrid; and I reflected that many such steps must seem wasted, many leading away from the beeline, that I did not know the road and had no idea what Madrid would be like when I reached it. All I could do was to take each step steadily, fearlessly, firmly and determinedly, trusting to the scanty information to be gathered from signposts and strangers, to keep more or less on the right road, and to take my chance of being satisfied with the unknown city which I had chosen as my goal with no reason beyond my personal whim.

This I made our march symbolize life. There were other analogies. We had to endure every kind of hardship heartily and to take our fun where we found it without being dainty. We learnt to enjoy every incident, to find something to love in every strange face, to admire even the dreariest wilderness of sunburnt scrub. We knew that nothing really mattered so long as we got to Madrid. The world went on very well without us and its fortunes were none of our business. The only thing that could annoy us was interference with out intention to get to Madrid, though we didn't want to go there except insofar as we had taken it into our heads to set our faces towards it.

All these lessons would be of value when I got to London. I meant to tell mankind to aspire to a new state about which I could tell them little or nothing, to teach them to tread a long and lonely path which might or might not lead thither, to bid them dare to encounter all possible perils of nature unknown, to abandon all their settled manners of living and cut themselves off from their past and their environment, and to attempt a quixotic adventure with no resources beyond their native strength and sagacity. I had done it myself and found not only that the pearl of great price was worth far more than I possessed, but that the very perils and privations of the Quest were themselves my dearest memories. I was certain of this at least: that nothing in the world except this was worth doing. We turned our steps from Burgo de Osma. It would have been pleasant to halt, but there was nothing to keep us. We were glad to rest and glad to go on. The march to Madrid was the only thing that mattered. So should it be with my life. Success should not stay my footsteps. Whatever I attained should restore my energies and spur me to more strenuous strides.

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Sir Palamedes was the most ambitious attempt to describe the Path of the Wise as I knew it. It is in its way almost complete, but there is no attempt to show the necessary sequence of the ordeals described in each section. The last section, in which Sir Palamedes, after achieving every possible task and finding that all his attainments did not bring him to the end of his Quest, abandons the following of the Questing Beast; he returns, discomfited, to the Round Table, only to find that, having surrendered, the Questing Beast comes to him of its own accord.

I could not pretend that this was more than a tour de force, an evasion of the issue. I know now that the true solution is this: there is no goal to be attained, as I had reached Madrid; the reward is in the march itself. As soon as I got to Madrid my adventures were at an end. If I had had to stay there I should have been bored to death, even if it had been the city of God itself. The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die.

The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal. Sir Palamedes expressed himself fully in following the Questing Beast. His success (as described in the poem) would in reality have left him with nothing to live for. My own life has been indescribably ecstatic, because even when I thought that there was a reward and a rest at the end, my imagination pictured them as so remote that I was in no danger of getting what I wanted. I am now wise enough to understand that every beat of my pulse marks a moment of exquisite rapture in the consciousness that the curve of my career is infinite, that with every breath I climb closer and closer to the limit, yet can never reach it. I am always aspiring, always attaining; nothing can stop me, not even success. I had some perception of this in these years of my life in London, for I wrote in The Book of Lies: "Only those are happy who have desired the unattainable."

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... a true and fascinating story of one of my early magical experiences; The Soldier and the Hunchback ! and ? which I still think one of the subtlest analyses that has ever been written on ontology, with its conclusion: that ecstatic affirmation and sceptical negation are neither of them valid in themselves but are alternate terms in an infinite series, a progression which is in itself a sublime and delightful path to pursue. Disappointment arises from the fear that every joy is transient. If we accept it as such and delight to destroy our own ideals in the faith that the very act of destruction will encourage us to rebuild a nobler and loftier temple from the debris of the old, each phase of our progress will be increasingly pleasant. "pi alpha mu phi alpha gamma epsilon pi alpha gamma gamma epsilon nu epsilon tau omega rho ", "All devouerer, all begetter", is the praise of Pan.

In us the will to live and the will to die should be equally strong and free, should be recognized as complements of each other, neither complete in itself; and the antithesis between them a device invented for our own amusement. All energy implies vibration. Man is miserable in the last analysis because he fancies that when what gives him pleasure is destroyed, as he knows it must be sooner or later, the loss is irreparable; so he shores up his crumbling walls instead of building himself a better house. We all cling to outworn customs of every kind and lie to ourselves about love when we know in our hearts that there is no more oil in the lamp, and that the best thing we can do is to look for a new one. We are afraid to lose whatever we have. We have not the sense to see that whatever it may be, it is bound to go sooner or later, that when it does its place will be filled by something just as good, and nothing is more stupid than to try to set back the sun upon the dial of Ahaz.

As soon as we learn that everything is only half, that it implies its opposite, we can let ourselves go with a light heart, finding just as much fun in the red leaves of autumn as in the green leaves of spring. What is interesting is the complete cycle. Life itself would be deplorably petty were it not consecrated by the fact of its incomprehensibility and dignified by the certainty that however petty, futile, baroque and contemptible its career may be, it must close in the sublime sacrament of death. As it is written in The Book of the Law, "-death is the crown of all."

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