Thelema Lodge Calendar for November 2002 e.v.

Thelema Lodge Calendar

for November 2002 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.

Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O.Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA

November 2002 e.v. at Thelema Lodge

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

Fonder than Scorpions

O Thou Mighty God, make me as a brown Scorpion that creepeth on through a vast desert of silver

--Liber 963: The Twelvefold Beseechment of God

The middle of autumn, under the sign of the Scorpion, finds our lodge turning a corner in the year, and perhaps taking a moment to collect our wits after one of the most intense and successful cycles of The Rites of Eleusis ever seen here. Some interesting new studies are being organized around the lodge this season, and after all the rehearsals and the planning of the past couple months it may well be time again to exercise the imagination in new areas, and perhaps generate some fresh ideas in time for the next cycle of performances. Enochian studies will be leading the offerings, with a new series of classes on the Heptarchia Mystica and the opening of our annual reading of The Vision and the Voice (Liber 418), with each of the thirty aethyrs being read ceremonially on the anniversary date of its original scrying 93 years ago. Members may be interested to do some reading for the group discussions which meet this month in the lodge library concerning The Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Karl von Eckartshausen, and The Varieties of Religions Experience by William James, though one need not read ahead to be welcome at these events. We open the month with an overflow of holiday rituals, celebrating not only the traditional cross-quarter feast of Samhain, but the festival of All Hallows (in a church, no less) as well. As always we have mass every Sunday evening a little past nightfall, and there will be O.T.O. initiations on Saturday 9th September. (To attend initiations it is necessary to make advance arrangements by contacting the lodgemaster or other lodge officers ahead of time. All involved must make contact well beforehand to learn the time, place, and the degree to be worked.) Applications for initiation in O.T.O. are available from the lodgemaster at most lodge events.

O Thou that standest on the Scorpion!
    Thee, Thee, Thee, Thee, I invoke!
    O Thou! from whom the Universe did spring!
          Thou, the All-Father, Thou whose plumes of power
    rise up to touch the Throne of the Concealed!
    Mighty! Merciful! Magnificent!
    Thee, Thee, Thee, Thee, I invoke!
                 --"Evocation of Taphtharatharath"

There will be a Thelemic observation of the combined ancient feasts of All Saints and All Souls on Friday evening 1st November at 8:30 in the sanctuary of Grace North Church in Berkeley. Presented by the Companions of Monsalvat, this event will offer Thelemites a taste of the high-church tradition, with specially composed liturgical music, ornate traditional vestments, and sumptuous ceremony (along with plenty of smells and bells). Located at 2138 Cedar Street (between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street), the Episcopalian parish center at Grace North provides an impressive experimental space for the transmutation of established ceremonial paradigms from the aeon of Osiris for use in our age of the Crowned and Conquering Child. All attending are requested to bring with them a contribution of nonperishable food for the church's holiday charity food drive.

Trembling, twittering, dissembling,
    The lips of the flute-players wander
    Over the stops, fiercer and fonder
    Than scorpions that writhe and curl
    In the fiery breast of an Arab girl!
               --"The Blind Prophet"

The Blade of Water

    40. I am become like a luscious devil of Italy; a fair strong woman with worn cheeks, eaten out with hunger for kisses. She hath played the harlot in divers palaces; she hath given her body to the beasts.
    41. She hath slain her kinsfolk with strong venom of toads; she hath been scourged with many rods.
    42. She hath been broken in pieces upon the Wheel; the hands of the hangman have bound her unto it.
    43. The fountains of water have been loosed upon her; she hath struggled with exceeding torment.
    44. She hath burst in sunder with the weight of the waters; she hath sunk into the awful Sea.
    -- Liber LXV, Chapter III

Sol reaches the heart of the scorpion before dawn on Thursday morning 7th November at 4:06 AM, and Thelema Lodge will gather for a Samhain ritual and feast that evening beginning at 7:30 in Horus Temple. Our transit through Cor Scorpionis will be observed in an Enochian style this year, taking off from the lodge's autumnal equinox ritual. Members wishing to get involved in the ceremonial working should speak well ahead of time with brother Michael Sanborn. All who attend are invited to bring dinner entrees, salads, or desserts, and also drinks to share in the feast which will follow our ritual.
Whereas the Formative World (Yetzirah) in the Old Aeon used the Sword of Air to divide the naught into multiplicity, Yetzirah in the New Aeon uses the waters of dissolution as a blade to reunite the many to the continuity of Nuit. If previously the ideal had consolidated into matter, so now does matter fuse into energy, just as in the core of every star. If previously the dense structures of creation invited identification and death, so now, by cutting through our partial identities, we come to the recollection of our eternity. From our dreaming, we turn to our awakening. We penetrate the pulse of Yin and Yang to find the kaleidoscopic resonance of celestial harmony.

Nothing in the world is more elastic and yielding than water; yet it is preeminent to dissolve things rigid and resistant; there is nothing which can match it. --The Tao Teh King, LXXVIII:1 (translated by Aleister Crowley)

We Claim Communion

As the oldest and most active sanctuary of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica in the Order today (or at any time in the past), offering more than 1200 celebrations of Liber XV over 25 years (465 masses in our present location without missing a Sunday over the past nine years), Thelema Lodge is proud to make participation in this ritual open to all who are willing the learn our liturgy. Members, friends, and guests of the lodge gather each week as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (the universal church of "those who know"). Gnostic newcomers are welcome, and we rarely have a mass without at least one first-time communicant. Call several days ahead to get directions to the temple if you have not previously visited our lodge. Everyone gathers in the lodge library to await the deacon's summons into the sanctuary of the gnosis at nightfall (or thereafter), and one of our gnostic bishops will be on hand to explain the workings of the mass to those unfamiliar with the Thelemic tradition. With autumn declining into winter we will be beginning somewhat earlier, so please arrive at Horus Temple by 7:30 on any Sunday evening to participate in the communion of the gnostic mass. The liturgy, as contained in the O.T.O.'s Liber XV, centers upon the ritual charging of an edible talisman (or eucharist) by three clerical officers, a priestess, priest, and deacon. In our temple members take turns fulfilling these rolls to serve the lodge at mass. To sign up as part of a team of celebrants, study the canon of the ritual and practice the roles with your partners until each knows all aspects of the ceremony comfortably and well. Priests and priestesses should completely memorize and understand their parts; memorization is optional for deacons so long as they are completely familiar with the lines they will be reading. Speak with the lodgemaster to put your mass team on the temple schedule.

The Science of the Saints

Beginning on the 6th of November and continuing on Wednesday evenings at 8:00 in the lodge library there will be a three-part seminar on The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, by the eighteenth century German mystic Karl von Eckartshausen. This text, which proposes the existence of an "interior church" of illuminated Adepts, was extremely influential in the formation of the self-identity of the original Golden Dawn and of the A

as well. Crowley's instructional Liber, An Account of the A

is a rewritten version of the second chapter of this book. By returning to this original source text, it is possible to gain a clearer idea of Crowley's understanding of the A

, and of the basis of his (and our own) spiritual mandate. In addition, The Cloud upon the Sanctuary is a fascinating example of Theosophical literature in the tradition of Jacob Boehme, a movement now largely forgotten in the English-speaking world that is nevertheless an important antecedent to Thelema.
There will be three meetings altogether, and the first will focus on chapter one, covering the Theosophical and Kantian foundations of the book's central argument. The second meeting will be dedicated exclusively to a close reading of the presentation in the second chapter of the doctrine of the interior church, and Crowley's interpretation of this idea. The third session will cover the remaining four chapters, which develop various additional themes, including Eckartshausen's metaphysics, anthropology, theory of symbolism, and system of stages of mystical attainment. Each meeting will begin with a presentation by the facilitator, followed by open discussion. For more information, please contact Nathan at balaam93@aol.com.

A Continuing Discourse

Most Philosophic, on the Heptarchia Mystica
Being the Ministers, Princes and Kings
of GOD His Divine Holy Angels
Being Set Aright in Holy Submission in the Bodies Celestial;
Being the Foundation of Astrology, Alchemy, and that Most Holy Secret of God His Mysteries which were employed by Enoch &c., as related by Dr John Dee in his writing and testimony thereof, in his Books of Five Mysteries; and the application of these Sciences in faithful Practice and innovative Usages
by a True ASPIRANT
I request your Presence, o Reader, in good conscious, according to the Providence of Thy own Divine Nature, as befitting a Star Most Holy and Completely Illuminated by the Light of Thine OWN Flame;
Incarnate and VISIBLE in this New Aeon
Enochian G

of which the Word is uttered in the Greek Tongue
Theta-epsilon-lambda-eta-mu-alpha

to Join with us, these Particular Tuesdays to Come, for a Discourse, Most Philosophic &c.

Long before the reception of the Enochian Watch Towers, and even of the Angelic Calls, John Dee and Edward Kelly had contact with forces and beings claiming to be Angels sent by God to show him the Mysteries of Creation and the Mysteries of Heaven. Much of this work allowed for the focus and control, the concentration and true understanding, of the material more popularly, and often inaccurately, published. We will start these discourses with the Ring PELE, which Dee is told "WITHOUT THIS THOU SHALT DO NOTHING." The Heptarchia Mystica explains a Preliminary form of Planetary Magick and Protocol that is to precede the Operations with Liber Loagaeth (Word of God), The Elemental and Alchemical Subangles of the Great Table, and the Saanir Coasgo, which compose the Thirty Aires, as found in Causabon's True and Faithful Relation &c. Working extensively with source material from all of Dee's published works, and facsimiles of Dee's own script, I have long prepared for a series of Discoveries to illustrate the system, from the initial points of reception to its ultimate vision, and to clearly outline the usages of the System for consistent exercise. Drawing on extensive Study and Practice, I have gained a capacity to clearly outline the components of the system and their purposes, and look forward to sharing it with enthusiasts and curious souls alike. The Initial Discourse will be 8:00 Tuesday evening 12th November at Thelema Lodge. Call (510) 652-3171 for directions. Subsequent Discourses will be given every other week, on Tuesdays at Thelema Lodge. Attendance at each Discourse is not mandatory, although strongly encouraged. The Discourses are free and open to all, but voluntary donations welcome at every O.T.O. event for the maintenance of our Space in support of the Community.

-- Charles Humphries

Cries of the Angels

During the dark half of the autumn the Companions of Monsalvat will again be reading the visions of the thirty Enochian aethyrs from Aleister Crowley's Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice, commemorating the 93rd anniversary of their original reception in North Africa. Readings will take place in the newly dedicated inner temple at Ashby House in Berkeley, with listeners welcome to attend as many aethyrs as they can manage. Most evening readings begin at 8:30, but contact the Companions to attend daytime readings held at the times recorded for the original scrying of each aethyr. Special arrangements will be made for aethyrs on Sundays to coordinate with the gnostic mass. For a precise schedule, call (510) 849-1970 or direct e-mail to Leigh Ann at motogrrl@pacbell.net.

Awe Mingled with a Delicious Restfulness

This month the Section Two reading group will be dipping into Section One of Crowley's A

reading list for a discussion of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James on the centenary of its original publication. This series of academic lectures on the psychology of religion, completed and published in 1902, seeks to establish the range of individual religious feeling, while avoiding the sectarian and sociological issues of church organization. James, whose father was a Swedenborgian enthusiast, had little experience of organized religion and no interest in it. Trained at Harvard in psychology, medicine, and philosophy, James concentrated instead upon patterns of individual response to the spiritual aspirations of the human will. His approach perhaps prefigures Thelema in the aeon of Horus, which was proclaimed in Liber AL within two years of the publication of James's study, and which is likewise founded upon the primacy of the individual will. James's methods resembled those of Sir J. G. Frazier in The Golden Bough (first published in 1890), where an extensive data base of field reports was first assembled from correspondents all around the world. James began his study by collecting accounts of religious experiences from a wide variety of sources, and then forming opinions based upon this data rather then seeking out confirmation for any preconceived notion of religion, as had nearly always been the case in previous investigations of the subject. James's study had enormous influence, defining the academic field of religious psychology for the twentieth century, and outlining the spiritual possibilities of its age.
Crowley used some of James's concepts to formulate the foundations of Thelema in proclaiming an aeon where new techniques and possibilities were becoming available. For example, James defines "pagan" (as a modern religious category) with reference to Walt Whitman, who "is often spoken of as a 'pagan.' The word nowadays means sometimes the mere natural animal man without a sense of sin" (page 85). In chapter 5 of Magick in Theory and Practice Crowley develops one of James's key concepts, from a passage previously quoted at length in The Temple of Solomon the King:
Professor William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, has well classified religion as the "once-born" and the "twice-born;" but the religion now proclaimed in Liber Legis harmonizes these by transcending them. There is no attempt to get rid of death by denying it, as among the once-born; nor to accept death as the gate of a new life, as among the twice-born. With the A

life and death are equally incidents in a career, very much like day and night in the history of a planet. But, to pursue the simile, we regard this planet from afar. A Brother of A

looks at (what another person would call) "himself", as one -- or, rather, some -- among a group of phenomena. He is that "nothing" whose consciousness is in one sense the universe considered as a single phenomenon in time and space, and in another sense is the negation of that consciousness. The body and mind of the man are only important (if at all) as the telescope of the astronomer to him. If the telescope were destroyed it would make no appreciable difference to the Universe which that telescope reveals."

Previous Section Two Next Section Two

Sirius Fun

Sirius Encampment of Ordo Templi Orientis plans a pot-luck dinner feast for members, friends, and guests on Saturday evening 23rd November beginning at 6:00 in north Berkeley. Stop by the Encampment and join in for an evening of revels and entertainment, with food and drinks welcome from all attending. Call Glenn at (510) 527-2855 for further information or directions.

Crowley Classics

    This essay was the earliest of Crowley's submissions to either of the two New York magazines edited by George Sylvester Viereck, The Fatherland and The International, each of which was to play a significant role in the Beast's professional life as a journalist in America during the Great War. After this piece he went on to publish half a dozen political essays in The Fatherland, ending only when that magazine ceased publication two years later upon America's entry into the war. At that point Crowley replaced Viereck as managing editor of The International, and ran that magazine nearly single- handedly for six months ending in April 1918 e.v. During the same period he also published dozens of articles and poems in Vanity Fair and contributed to other periodicals as occasion arose.
    Sometimes in his journalism of this period Crowley would dissemble regarding his nationality (always a tricky issue in war time). In Vanity Fair he several times pretended to be Chinese, even publishing his portrait photograph in Chinese dress to prove it. In The Fatherland, a pro-German propaganda organ directly funded by the nation after which it was named, he usually pretended to be Irish. The carelessly seditious Irish attitude toward the first world war (as typified in some of the writings of W. B. Yeats) was of great rhetorical use to an author seeking covertly to over-blow and topple the arguments for American sympathy with the Germans. Crowley made use of his Irish disguise in bolstering the very odd (and quite fictitious) hatred of Britain which he assumed in those articles.
    Apart from earning good money which he very much needed, it has never been clearly explained just what Crowley thought he was up to in writing articles of questionable loyalty for the pro-German press in New York during the years when America stood on the sidelines of the hostilities between Germany and Britain. The tone of these political essays varies greatly; some seem broadly comic while others -- such as this present article -- seem to speak with an exaggerated earnestness that is difficult to take seriously. Each of the essays is basically odd, ambiguous, unclear, and confusing. This present piece in particular seems calculated to alienate nearly any possible reader with its crass scorn for nearly every nation and ethnic group. It is not difficult to understand how Crowley may have felt that an article such as this amidst the serious German propaganda of The Fatherland might either drive readers to discard the magazine in disgust, or else influence them to repeat arguments which would in turn mark them as hateful extremists.
    Back at the beginning of 1915 e.v. when this first Fatherland contribution appeared, no thought had been given to Crowley's Irish identity, and he seems to write here in his natural persona as an eccentric and ambivalent but still altogether English sort of Brit. Six months later, however (before placing any more overtly political articles under his by-line), Crowley performed an elaborate stunt near the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, by which he announced himself an Irishman. The New York Times carried a lengthy and noncommittal account of this performance, which consisted in tearing up an envelope (supposed to contain his British passport), scattering its pieces over the harbor, and reading a "declaration of independence" for Ireland (after which Crowley directed his chartered boat full of invited reporters back to Manhattan, where he treated them all to a good breakfast and sent them off satisfied to write up their stories).
    The first nine sections of this essay originally appeared in The Fatherland 23 (New York: 13 January 1915), on pages 11-15; the remainder of the article following in the same periodical's issue for 20th January (pages 5-6). There was a brief editorial comment printed before each of the installments. The first notice read: "(The Allies have been jubilant over the frankness of Maximillian Harden. It is at least matched by the frankness of Mr Aleister Crowley, the pro-British poet. In fact, this is so well realized in England that the present article is circulated secretly in manuscript and every precaution is taken to prevent its views from becoming known to the 'common people.' Let us add that the editors of The Fatherland do not agree with the author's final conclusions and that the article is published solely as a significant expression of British opinion. In next week's issue Mr Crowley will conclude his brilliant exposure of British hypocrisy.)" A week later when the essay was completed the editor noted: "(In last week's issue of The Fatherland Mr Aleister Crowley, the famous English poet, exposed with remarkable forcibleness the inherent hypocrisy of his countrymen. The following paper concludes Mr Crowley's analysis of British sham and folly.)"

Honesty is the Best Policy

by Aleister Crowley

"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as ithers see us!"
-- Burns

    We are in for one of our periodical orgies of Cant. Right (and God, of course, thank God!) struggles gallantly in its tiny way against Armed Might, Tyranny, Barbarism; the Allies pit their puny force against the hordes of Huns. Parsons preach on David and Goliath, publicists invoke Jack the Giant- Killer. The odds are always ten to one. Fortunately, one Englishman is a match for 18 1/3 Germans, as statistics prove.
    Englishmen, even educated Englishmen, even travelled Englishmen, manage to hypnotize themselves into believing this.
    In point of fact, gallant little Germany is against a world in arms. Austria has been torn for many years by internal divisions; only a part of her population is of German stock. But against Germany and this one friend are arrayed Russia, France, England, Servia, Montenegro, and Japan; and every one of these nations is throwing its whole diplomatic weight into the task of getting Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Holland, Denmark, and the United States of America to join in. We are only about six to one at present, and feel insecure.
    My own view is simpler. We have waited for a long while to smash Germany and steal her goods. We have taken a first-class opportunity, and we shall never regret it.

II.

    We thank God that we are not as other men. There are no stained glass windows bright enough for us. Our haloes are top heavy.
    We have quite forgotten that the Belgian is the most cruel, mean, and cowardly cur in Europe, that we have demonstrated till all are blue against him as assassin, torturer, mutilator, and cannibal. We have dined in our thousands to acclaim his disgrace. We heard of nothing but "Red Rubber;" of niggers with hands, and feet, and indeed all that was off-choppable, off- chopped; of rape, robbery, murder, anthropophagy, and so on, until even our sanest etymologists began to derive Belgium from Belial and Belphegor and other leading Lucifuges of the hierarchy of the Pit. King Cléopolde, who was really a foolish kindly old gentleman with a taste in petticoats, the spit of a hundred vieux marcheurs in any Pall Mall Club, was compared to all the Roman Emperors from Caligula and Nero to Justinian and Diocletian. And now it is Gallant Little Belgium, and Les Braves Belges, and enough about heroes and martyrs to make any decent man vomit!
    Anything the Belgians may have got they asked for. Flagellum qui meruit ferat!

III.

    We thank God that we are not as other men. Humph! If the French are being beaten, they have only themselves to blame. Does one expect a Leonidas from France?
    Outside the sacred Mount of Parnassus, where dwell Rodin, and Anatole France, and a few more, what names does one know but names of scandal? Eiffel, and Reinach, and Dreyfus, and Henry, and du Paty de Clam, and de Lesseps, and Meyer, and Mme. Humbert, and Mme. Steinheil, and Mme. Caillaux. Since 1870 the history of France is a history of mean and mostly unintelligible squabble, fringed with Jesuitry and pseudo-Mason intrigue, a viler, an obscurer money-grubbery than even that of Haussmann and the Second Empire. In all the labyrinth of French group-politics is there a name unsmirched by what in any other country would be felony?
    What sort of an army is it whose officers conspire wholesale against the state and have to be brought over by a Bourse-ridden republic, bribe beating bribe? What sort of republic whose chief magistrate can be smacked publicly in the face at a racecourse and not dare to retaliate, the pretenders to whose throne can allow their conspirators to culminate and at the last moment fear to show themselves, so that all their followers are thrown into prison -- when a single bold push would have set them on the throne?
    Calmette, the Bel-ami journalist, who by trickery and treason makes himself the greatest power in French journalism, threatens to expose the master- blackmailer, to unmask the "impregnable" frontier fortresses that are still armed with the guns of 1872; he is murdered by a woman who in England would be considered as a doubtful starter in any concourse of moderately respectable demi-mondaines -- and a jury is found to declare that she did not commit the act to which she openly confesses!
    England has spent about nine centuries in hating and despising France, in crying out on her for atheism and immorality and all the rest of it; Edward the Seventh, one night upon Montmartre, shwears the French are jolly good shportsh, bigod, and lo! the Angel of the Entente Cordiale. Mimi Tete-Beche is Sainte-Genieviüve, and Jésus-la-Caille becomes the Saviour of Protestant England.
    Is it a nation in which abortion has become a national danger that will freely give her sons to the Republic?
    If so, only because the French people is not corrupted, even by their politicians.
    I love the French -- I will not yield precedence to Edward VII, though I prefer Montparnasse to Montmartre, and pay for my own dinner at Lapérouse's where he accepted £20,000 to dine at the Café Anglais -- and I want to see them victorious and prosperous. But I shall not mistake France for Sparta.

IV.

    As to Russia, we have had nothing but whole-hearted abuse since 1850. Even their ridiculous fear of having their children stolen by Jews for the purposes of ritual murder -- as they most fixedly believe -- has been represented as religious bigotry, when it is at the worst but peasant ignorance like the belief in witchcraft.
    We have received and fêted the would-be assassins of their Tsar; we have imagined Red Sunday in St. Petersburg, and fulminated against pogroms, and preached against vodka and brutal Cossacks till anyone who has even been to Russia wants to go away quietly and die; and the next thing is that we hold up our railways and smuggle 150,000 of the brutal Cossacks aforesaid to fling them on the flank of the German armies in Normandy and Picardy. Well, no! it was only a Secret Service lie. But how dearly we all wished it true!
    Have we not wept and yelled over Poland? And has not the Tsar promised autonomy to Poland once and again, and tricked?
    My own view of Russia is that it is the freest country in the world; but it is a little sudden for our Nonconformists who have denounced her as a tyrant for the last sixty years, to hail her thus incontinently as the Champion of European Liberty.

    It is disgusting to have to foul clean paper with the name of Servia.
    These swineherds who murdered and mutilated their own king and queen; whose manners make their own pigs gentlefolk; these assassins who officially plot and execute the dastard murder of the Crown Prince of a nation with whom they are at peace; these ruffians so foul that even cynical England hesitates to send a minister to their court of murderers -- these be thy gods today, O England!
    "Heroic little Servia!"

VI.

I have not a word to say against the Montenegrins. They are decent, honest cutthroats.

VII.

    And now we come to the treacherous monkeys of Japan, the thieves and pirates of the East. Who makes the shoddy imitations of European and American machinery, forges the names of famous firms, sticks at no meanness to steal trade? Who, under cover of alliance with England, fostered in China a boycott of all English goods?
    Only yesterday Japan was at the throat of Russia -- or at least trod heavily on one big toe. Today in Tokio they sing the Russian national anthem, and cheer the ambassador whenever he appears.
    Why not? of course. It is natural, it is human; it is all in order. But it is fickleness and treachery; it is hypocrisy and humbug. Diplomacy is of necessity all this; but at least let us mitigate the crime by confession!
    Human nature is never so bad when it is not shackled by the morality of emasculate idealists.
    Does any person who knows the Far East believe even in an opium dream that Japan had any quarrel with Germany, or any care for her alliance with England? Kaio-Chau was an easy enough prey; well, then, snatch it, and chance the wrath of schoolmarmed America and the egregious Wilson. But for God's sake, and by the navel of Daibutsu, and the twelve banners of the twelve sects of Buddha, let us spew out the twaddle about honor, and justice, and oppressed China, and the sanctity of alliance!

VIII.

    And England! England the Home of Liberty, the Refuge of the Oppressed, the Star of Hope of the Little Nations. I suppose that any other nation about whom they sang "They're hanging men and women too
For wearing of the green." would suppress the song by yet more hangings. The English are cynical enough to sing it themselves!
    The English are ever on the look-out for atrocities. Bulgarian atrocities, Armenian atrocities, Tripolitan atrocities, Congo atrocities, and now German atrocities. One notices that the atrocity of the atrocitators varies with their political objectionability.
    The parable of the mote and the beam was made for England, surely.
    German atheism! from the compatriots of Shelley, Thomson, Bradlaugh, Morley, and John Burns.
    German sensuality! from the fellow-citizens of Swinburne, Rossetti, Keats, and a dozen others.
    German blasphemy! when the Kaiser invokes the God of Battles. As if the success of British arms were not prayed for daily in the churches, the name of God invoked in the addresses to the soldiers, and the very motto of England, Dieu et mon droit! It is true the Kaiser was first to make emphatic an insistence that God was his ally; it seems that England has the old literary grievance against those qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!
    Indeed saevita!
    German militarism! A strange rebuke from a nation whose saner citizens at this hour are cursing themselves that they did not have conscription twenty years ago, from a nation which has by a sham Insurance Act riveted heavier fetters on their slave-class than were ever ball and chain.
    And it is England that can produce a firm of piano manufacturers to start a boycott of German pianos -- their own pianos being all German but the cases! -- and a boycott of German music. And it is England that can show a composer who writes to the papers that he will now "try harder than he ever tried before" to beat Bach and Beethoven and Brahms and Straus and Wagner! In the meantime he will refrain from the wicked and unpatriotic luxury of Vienna steak! And since Kant thought two and two make four, for all true Englishmen they must make five in future.
    Have Englishmen forgotten their own Royal family? "The very dogs in England's court
They bark and howl in German."
    Edward VII spoke English with an accent; and at the first hour of war with Germany we found the first Lord of the Admiralty a German Prince!
    Until this year England has never been at war with Germany in the course of history since the Conquest. Our very speech, half German, betrayeth us.
    All this is finished. The German is a Hun, and a Vandal, and a monster, and a woman-torturer, and a child-murderer, and runs away in his millions at the sight of a Territorial from Hoxton. And the British Army has won victory after victory against enormous odds, some sixtyfold, and some eightyfold, and some a hundredfold, and has retreated (for strategic purposes, luring the hosts of the Kaiser to their doom) nearly as fast as a frightened man can run, and exactly as fast as a victorious host can pursue them.
    It is not a quarter of a million against 60,000 as it was in the Boer war. And even then the British were so handsomely beaten that in a few years they were obliged to hand back the government to the "defeated" enemy, who now treats the "rooinek" a great deal worse than ever Kruger did. But he professes "loyalty" whenever it suits him, and we all boast of pacified and united South Africa, and shoot down British miners and deport their leaders, in flat violation of their own constitution. In short, all parties have acted throughout with that good sense which in themselves they call Truth and Righteousness, and in others cynical immorality.

IX.

    But more shameful and silly than all is our attitude to the diplomatic situation. Even papers normally sane are found perverting truth, and distorting facts, and misrepresenting motives, and misinterpreting plain words, in a way that would bring a blush to the cheek of a nonconformist. The common hack newspapers call the flight of the British from Mons to Paris "the greatest military feat of modern times," and one feels that Xenophon must be shivering in the Elysian Fields (while President Poincaré finds the Champs Elysées too hot for him) at the news of how the Retreat of the Ten Thousand has been eclipsed. But this sort of lie is common to every country, and indeed the Germans are as keen to publish stories of the murder of their wounded, treacherous attacks by civilians, and any other violation of the rules of war which the imagination of their journalists can invent, as any other nation.
    With parallel cant, they represent Cossacks as cannibals, and Highlanders as naked savages; but the most fair-minded of critics can hardly cavil at their complaint that in order to swamp their brave little army the world has been ransacked of every tribe, race, kingdom, principality, and power. Germania delenda est, and the end justifies the means.
    Algerians, not only of Arab, but of negroid and even negro stock, have been hurled into the line; India has gushed out a venomous river of black troops -- the desperate Ghoorka, whose kukri is thrust upwards through the bowels, the Pathan, whose very women scavenge the battlefield to rob, murder, and foully mutilate the dead, the fierce Sikh, the lithe Panjabi, the Bengali even, whose maximum of military achievement is The Black Hole of Calcutta!
    Against the Boers we Englishmen did not dare employ savage troops. Europe would have risen in arms at the abomination.
    Today we do it, because all armed Europe is already either for us or against us. And, with all that, we use the Japanese! Can we complain if the German papers say the that Kaiser is fighting for culture, for civilization, when the flower of the allied troops are black, brown, and yellow "heathens," the very folks whom we have stopped from hook-swinging, suttee, child-murder, human sacrifice, and cannibal feast? From Senegambia, Morocco, the Soudan, Afghanistan, every wild band of robber clans, come fighting men to slay the compatriots of Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart, Dürer, Helmholtz, Hertz, Haeckel, and a million other perhaps obscurer, no less noble, men of the Fatherland of music, of philosophy, of science, and of medicine, the land where education is a reality and not a farce, the land of Luther and Melancthon, the land whose life blood washed out the Ecclesiastical tyranny of the Dark Ages.
    The Huns!
    Indignation has led me from the point of my paragraph. It was my purpose to expose the infamous pretense -- which, however, is not too inane to dupe even clean-sighted Englishmen in their hysteric hour -- the pretense that the Kaiser is a "mad dog," a homicidal maniac, a man like Nebuchadnezzar in the Hebrew fable, or like Atilla the Scrouge of God, or Tamberlane.
    It is a lie. The Kaiser has always been, and is today, a man of peace. He has indeed lived up to the maxim Si vis pacem, para bellum and, loaded with the legacy of hate which the impolitic annexation of Alsace-Lorraine had thrust upon his shoulders, he could do no less without offering the breast of Germany to the ravisher. A lamb to the slaughter, indeed, with La Revanche in every mouth! What would he do, with men yet alive who remembered Jena, and the ceaseless raids and ravages of Bonaparte?
    But in a hundred crises he kept his head; he kept the peace. He had plenty of chances to smash France forever; he did not take them. An ambitious prince might have put a relative on the throne of Louis XIV while France was torn by the Boulanger affair, the Panama scandal, the Dreyfus horror, when Diogenes might have gone through France with a modern search-light for his lantern without finding a single man who was not a traitor to his country, or at least to the Republic, and the most trustworthy man of affairs was he who could be trusted to put the "double-cross" on every one. The Kaiser never stirred.
    It would have been easy to destroy the Russian menace at the time when Japan was straining the sinews of the Tartar giant, or when the Moscow Revolution showed that the Tsar could not trust his own soldiers, and the Imperial Guard, hastily summoned from St. Petersburg, shut up the garrison of Moscow in the Kremlin, trained their own guns upon them, and disarmed them. The Kaiser did nothing.
    And then came the Triple Entente.
    Germany was held like a deer in a lion's jaws. Austria, her only friend, was being ruined by insidious politics even more surely than by open attacks. Barred in the Adriatic, barred in the Baltic, the Teuton had but one small strip of reasonably open coast. That the Kasier made that coast the greatest navel base in the world was held to be a "menace."
    Surely the Russo-Japanese war and the Boer war showed plainly -- if any fool there were who could not see it à priori -- that the greatest, widest, best,and only impregnable military base is the sea. Today we can bring Russian troops from Vladivostock or Archangel and land them at Ostend, a million at a time, and Germany must be well-served indeed by spies if she knows of the operation in time to guard against it. Is it then so treacherous and aggressive if Germany, threatened by an alliance (hypocritically described as an entente) of powers outnumbering her by six to one, sought to keep open a path to raid that universal base of operations? For this she has ruined herself financially, has hampered her social and economic development, has been compelled to serve the Leah of war when the whole genius of the nation lies with the Rachel of peace. The English are the least military and the most warlike of all peoples, said someone; the converse is truer still of Germany.
    From Vercingetorix to Wilhelm I, Germany, as Germany, hardly could claim a victory. Even today it is military Prussia which drags Bavaria art-lover, and all the peasant provinces, to war. And all the might of the Junker and his fierceness and his bravery and his aristocratic prestige could never do it but for the root-fact which every German feels: that, unarmed, he would be the morsel of a moment for the Russian Octopus, or the toy to grasp and shatter of some warrior schoolboy like Caesar or Napoleon.
    Pan-Germanism itself, intrinsically bad as it is if regarded from the standpoint of the Universe, has its apology. One becomes tired of being an irremovable obstacle; one thinks it may be less strain on the nerves if one takes one's turn at being an irresistible force. "Why does a goalkeeper look old sooner than a centre forward?"
    Even the stolid Teuton nature must tire of the perpetual squeeze of Russia, the spurs of the French chanticleer struck even and anon in his hide.
    And since the Entente the ordeal of the Kaiser has been Promethean. Insult after insult he has had to swallow; injury upon injury he has had to endure. The Kiao-Chau adventure, harmless and rational, was balked, then sterilized, then counterpoised. The colonies did not prosper. England built like a maniac against his navy; Churchill deliberately pulled his nose by the impudent proposal for limitation of arguments.
    Agadir was a fresh humiliation; for a few acres of uninhabitable jungle on the Congo he had to surrender all interest in Morocco, a country he had nursed for years.
    It is still a diplomatic secret, and I must not betray it. But who financed Italy in her Tripolitan adventure, and why?
    The last straw was the Balkan war. Blotted was his one hope of escape to the East; his ewe-lamb, Turkey, was torn to pieces before his eyes, and he could not stir a finger to prevent it. Austria still blocked in the Adriatic, Italy alienated from the Triple Alliance, the Slav expanding everywhere, Constantinople itself threatened, Roumania (even) turning toward Russia, he must have felt like a victim of that maiden of armor and spears that once executed justice on the weak. What was his only success? The formation of the Kingdom of Albania -- a kingdom pour rire, a kingdom à la Gilbert and Sullivan, Prince William of Wied less like a cat on hot bricks than like a spider on a glowing shovel. He never possessed so much as his capital in peace.
    And all this had been accomplished without sword drawn or cannon fired.
    Here then stood Wilhelm, dauntless but defeated. His diplomacy had failed; his one ally was handicapped by domestic unrest; he was isolated in Europe; England was increasing her navy at a pace he could never beat; France, with her three years' law, was proposing to increase her army by fifty per cent at a stroke; Russia was turning flank, pushing on through the Balkans subtly and surely.
    And the Kaiser answered, "I am the servant of God; I stand for peace. The Crown Prince is for war; I banish him from the Court. When I am dead let him be master; but while I live I am for peace. And let him that draws the sword perish by the sword!"
    And the Triple Entente gathered closer and chuckled: Aha! he dare not fight. Let us frighten the garotte!
    So Servia plots and executes the crime of Sarajevo. Austria, its aged Emperor smitten yet again and most foully, demands imperatively the disclosure of the accomplices of the assassins. Servia replies in terms of evasion, evasion impudently cynical. Austria stirs. Russia -- and there is no pretense possible, the murder of the Archduke was either instigated by Panslavism or was a threat equally to the Tsar as to any other ruler -- replies by mobilizing. Before Austria has moved a man or a gun, Russia mobilizes.
    And what was the position of the German Emperor? His bankers had told him that Germany could no longer endure the weight of her armor; the incident of Zabern had shown the Junkers that they could still control the Social Democrats, but that another year or two would see the end of their power. He must strike now or never.
    He looked about him. The weakness of the British Government and its supposed preoccupation with the Ulster folly and the suffragettes encouraged him to hope.
    He saw France, mere rottenness, its bandages torn off by the pistol-shot of Mme. Caillaux.
    All things conspired; he would make one final effort for peace by threatening Russia.
    And then he suddenly knew that it was no good. Nothing was any good; nothing would ever be any good again. Sir Edward Grey spoke for peace, spoke of neutrality, in the House of Commons at a moment when thousands of British troops were already in Belgian waters, and the fleet, concentrated and ready for action, already held the North Sea.
    France withdrew her troops from the frontier "so as to avoid any possibility of incidents which might be mistaken for aggression," while her Algerian and Senegambian troops were on the water, half-way to Marseilles.
    He knew that this time there was no hope of peace. Abdication itself would hardly have saved Germany from a long-prepared, carefully-planned war, a war whose avowed object, an object in the mouth of every man in the street, was the destruction of Austria, the dismemberment of Germany. They had got him.
    Even a worm will turn; even a Quaker will fight if he is cornered.
    Wilhelm struck.
    I write in English for those English who count, and this is the proper way to view the matter. Germany is a rich prize. We can capture German trade, German manufactures, German shipping, German colonies. We can exact an indemnity sufficient to cripple Germany for a dozen generations. We can split Germany into six kingdoms or republics, and weaken her beyond repair forever. We can double-cross Russia by insisting on the creation of a new Poland. We can destroy the German fleet, and economize on dreadnoughts. We can force our proletariat to accept conscription and starve off the social revolution. We can drown the Irish question in Lethe; we can fight a general election on the war, and keep the present gang of politicians in office.
    And, best of all! we can achieve all this in the name of Honor, and the Sanctity of Treaties, and the Cause of the Democracies, and we can ask the blessing of God upon our arms in the name of Liberty, and Civilization, and Prosperity, and Progress.

Editorial Notes:
    Flagellum qui meruit ferat! -- "The one who strikes deserves to bear the blow."
    Dieu et mon droit! -- "for God and my right" (motto of the British crown).
    qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! -- indeed saevita! -- "[curse] those who utter our remarks before we do -- (indeed) savagely [curse them]!"
    Germania delenda est -- "Germany must be destroyed."
    Si vis pacem, para bellum -- "If you want peace, prepare for war."
    La Revanche -- "revenge"
    pour rire -- "for fun"

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from the Grady Project:

Research into the editorial archives of the original Magickal Link has uncovered a few unpublished articles on which Grady worked nearly twenty years ago for his monthly column on the front page of that periodical, at the time the "official organ" of our Order. In resurrecting the present essay, we hope that readers will bear in mind that Grady himself (along with his editorial assistants on the Link) never decided to publish this piece. It deals with a few of the frustrations and aggravations of mastership, and the diatribe also betrays Grady's temper a bit; he might later have reconsidered some of these gruff comments. It does afford, however, an interesting glance into the social life of the grand lodge in Berkeley during those years, as well as a glimpse at the even more remote Kaaba Clerk-House in San Francisco. The piece survives as two pages of typescript, with corrections and alterations in the author's handwriting. It appears more or less compete, although the conclusion is slightly abrupt and possibly there might have been more to add along the way. Apart from accidental features of presentation (such as punctuation), special editorial effort has been made to render Grady's language unaltered, although a few of his incompletely indicated revisions have been polished slightly, and in the interests of privacy the surname of one member has been initialized.

"Good Grief, Charlie Brown!"
or, What Will the Zen Master Accept?
by Hymenaeus Alpha 777

    Anyone who has ever been into Zen sitting knows that the answer to the koan is not what Alan Watts has advertised ("the sound of one hand clapping" is silence) but rather what the Zen master will accept. The same is true of Thelema.
    You would not believe how many people think they have the one and only hammer-lock on reality. As those of you know who attend our sessions on San Pablo in Berkeley, the public sessions take place in the "public" rooms downstairs. Neither Shirine nor I have ever issued anyone an invitation to invade the sanctity of our bedroom. It is, to begin with, upstairs, and normally we keep the door shut. So you can imagine my surprise, and curiosity, recently when I came wandering upstairs to find that a recent Minerval initiate had casually invaded our bedroom and was thoughtfully inventorying my Crowley library. At least the small tid-bits that were in the bookcases against the south wall. Naturally the "goodies" -- first editions of The Book of Thoth, Olla, The Star in the West, Blue Equinox, Equinox I volumes one through ten, etc. -- were long ago placed in commercial storage. After you have been ripped off a few times you begin to realize that just because someone says they are a Thelemite does not guarantee that they are a Thelemite. I did not order him out of the room. I simply stood there until the asshole left. Then I shut the door. After this, guests will be directed to use the bathroom downstairs.
    The same is true of karma yoga. Any number of people are signing up to be initiated into Aleister Crowley's ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS these days, but you would not believe how many are coming up with the excuse that they cannot pay the nominal fees, even if spread out over a year. In the past we have attempted to bridge this gap by making provision for them to do work of some nature usually unspecified, on the basis that, if something needs to be done, we could always call on them and write it off against their initiation fees. No more. Too many people, we have discovered, simply will not honor such a commitment. Usually it comes down to the type of work. What needs to be done around a Profess House of the Order? Well, all kinds of things, actually; many of which are rather menial. Sweep the floors? Cut the lawn? Wash the dishes? Someone has to do it, or it won't get done. How can we have the Agape feasts of the Initiate evening if there is not someone there to cook the food, see that the dishes are washed, the house is clean, the black robes are stitched, etc.? Yet when you suggest this to the perspective initiate, the answer is, more often than not, "Oh no, I think I want to do something better than that!" Better than what? What needs to be done? It reminds me of when the Kaaba Clerk-House was in operation on Balboa Street in San Francisco in the 1970s. (Not the phony "Kaaba" of Level Press that attempted to imitate it years later.) When we first moved in, we were sleeping on the floor. After a week or so I began to notice that the "wolly bears" were gathering. As we were sleeping on pallets on the floor, until we eventually acquired some furniture, it became a health hazard, i.e. breathing that dust and debris. So I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the place. Only to discover that I was the only one around there that thought that sweeping up the place was worth doing. Everybody else had something "better" to do. Not me. As it says in THE BOOK OF THE LAW, "Establish at thy Kaaba a Clerk-House." That was my Holy of Hollies. I thought that it was a privilege to sweep the floor of my temple. But you would be amazed at how few people share that opinion. That is why it is so refreshing to have a Tom W. around. Tom got tired of ingesting the smog of Los Angeles into his lungs and asked if he might come and stay with us. Having an extra bedroom at the time, it seemed reasonable, so we agreed. Not without some thought that it could be a very great mistake. Yet Tom has seen it the right way. If the dishes need washing, he washes them. If the lawn needs mowing, he mows it. If the car needs tuning, he tunes it. This is what we mean by "service without purpose" -- by service "without lust of result." If something needs to be done, you do it. You do not worry about whether you want to do it, you just do it. And I think that the rewards, to Tom, have been in proportion. You would not believe how many groovy things there are happening around here at any one time, whether it is getting it together for an Initiate evening (and of course the feast after!), or a Sunday run up to the Sonoma wine country, or a Druid ceremony up in the Grove, or a sky-clad Wiccan trip a la Gerald Gardner (who got his dispensation from Aleister Crowley), or doing Dramatic Ritual on Tuesday evening, or studying magick under the expert teacher who studied under Aleister Crowley, or whatever. There are simply dozens of things to do around here, and all of them are fun once you realize that it doesn't make much difference what you are doing, so long as it needs to be done, and you are a part of it.
    Aleister Crowley had a very great sense of humor. He once chided me for being part of a generation that was "too serious." His way of putting it was that he felt sorry for us who had missed the fun of the old time English Music Hall. "The thing about them," he said, "was that they were JOLLY!" This goes with his views on spontaneity in the writing of poetry. Not all the rationality -- machine work -- in the world will bring down the spontaneity of the intuitive realm.

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Thelema Lodge Events Calendar for November 2002 e.v.

11/1/02	Companions of Monsalvat All Hallows ritual 8:30 PM. at Grace North Church, Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/3/02	Gnostic Mass 7:30PM Horus Temple	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/4/02	New Moon 12:34 PM in Scorpio
11/6/02	Eckartshausen The Cloud upon the Sanctuary seminar with Nathan 8:00 PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/7/02	Samhain feast & ritual 7:30 PM Sun 15 degrees Scorpio at 4:06 AM	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/9/02	O.T.O. Initiations (call to attend)	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/10/02	Gnostic Mass 7:30PM Horus Temple	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/12/02	Heptarchia Mystica Enochian series with Charles 8:00 PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/13/02	Eckartshausen The Cloud upon the Sanctuary seminar with Nathan 8:00 PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/14/02	Companions of Monsalvat Liber 418 reading 30th Aethyr TEX 8:30 PM at Ashby House	(510) 849-1970
11/17/02	Liber 418 6:30 29th Aethyr RII at Ashby House	(510) 849-1970
11/17/02	Gnostic Mass 7:30PM Horus Temple	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/18/02	Section II reading group with Caitlin: William James: Varities of Religious Experience 8PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/19/02	Full Moon in Taurus 5:34 PM
11/20/02	Eckartshausen The Cloud upon the Sanctuary seminar with Nathan 8:00 PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/22/02	Pathworking with Paul 8:00PM at Horus Temple	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/23/02	Sirius Encampment Feast 6 PM in North Berkeley	(510) 527-2855	Sirius Camp
11/23/02	Liber 418 8:30 28th Aethyr BAG at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/24/02	Liber 418 6:30 27th Aethyr ZAA at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/24/02	Gnostic Mass 7:30PM Horus Temple	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/25/02	Liber 418 8:30 26th Aethyr DES 25th Aethyr VTI at Ashby House	(510) 849-1970
11/26/02	Heptarchia Mystica Enochian series with Charles 8:00 PM in the library	(510) 652-3171	Thelema Ldg.
11/26/02	Liber 418 8:30 24th Aethyr NIA at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/27/02	Companions of Monsalvat Liber 418 reading 23rd Aethyr TOR 22nd Aethyr LIN 8:30PM at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/28/02	Companions of Monsalvat Liber 418 reading 21st Aethyr ASP 8:30PM at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970
11/30/02	Companions of Monsalvat Liber 418 reading 20th Aethyr KHR 19th Aethyr POP 8:30PM at Ashby House in Berkeley	(510) 849-1970