An Exerpt from Confessions of Aleister Crolwey: A
Warning
I solemnly warn the world that, while courage is the first
virtue of the Magician, presumptuous and
reckless rashness has no more connection with it than a
caricature of the ex-Kaiser with Julius
Caesar. It is composed partly of sham pride prompted by
self-love and self-doubt; partly by the
insane impulse which the extremity of fear excites. There are
plenty of V.C.'s who won the cross,
not "for valour", but for lack of self-control over their
crisis of cowardice. Discipline automatically
made running away impossible; the only way out was to rush
forward and do whatever their innate
instinct suggested. I know two V.C.'s myself who have no memory
whatever of the act that won
them the cross.
Similar psychology often makes young Magicians forget that to
dare must be backed by to will
and to know, all three being ruled by to keep silence. Which
last means many things, but most of
all so to control oneself that every act is done noiselessly;
all disturbance means clumsiness or
blundering. The soldier may happen not to be hit as he carries
his wounded comrade through the
barrage, but there is no luck in Magick. We work in a fluid
world, where every moment is
compensated at once. Light, sound and electricity may be shut
out, and so the effects of human
thought, speech and action may divert or delay their action,
but Magick, like gravitation, knows no
obstacle. It is true that one can lift a fallen flower from the
floor and keep it on a table; but the
forces are
at work all the time, and the action has been completely
compensated by the redistribution of the
stresses on every material object in the whole universe, by the
shifting of the centre of gravity of
the cosmos, as my muscles sway from one state of equilibrium to
another, and the flower exerts its
energies from the mahogany instead of the carpet.
Presumption in Magick is, therefore, sure to be punished ---
swiftly and justly. The error is one of
the worst because it attracts all these forces which, being
themselves weak, are made malignant by
pain and find their principal solace in taking it out of anyone
they feel they can bully. Worse still,
the hysterical expansion of the ego means the deepest possible
treason to truth. It invites obsession
by every deceitful demon. They puff up the pride of the fool
still further; they flatter every foible,
exhort him to acts of the most
ridiculous kind, induce him to talk the most raving rubbish and
teach him to think himself the
greatest man in the world --- nay, not a man, but a god. He
scores every fiasco as a success,
takes every trifle as a token either of his sacrosanct
sovereignty or of the malice of hell whose
hounds have been mustered to martyr him. His megalomania swings
from maniacal exaltation to
melancholia, with delusions of persecution.
I have seen several cases of exactly this kind caused by so
seemingly trivial a mistake as
carelessness in consecrating the Circle for an evocation of an
inferior spirit; claiming a Grade in the
Order without having made sure of having passed every test
perfectly at every point; presuming to
instruct a probationer in his work before becoming a neophyte;
omitting essential points of ritual as
troublesome formalities; or even making excuses for error of
the kind by which a man persuades
himself that his faults are really due to the excess of his
merits.