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				Comments 
				by 
				
				Aleister 
				 
				Crowley: |       In January 1918, I 
				published a revised version of the "Message 
				of the Master Therion" and also of the "Law of 
				Liberty", a pamphlet in which I uttered a panegyric upon the Law 
				as the key to freedom and delight. (To get rid of the subject I 
				had better mention here the other magical essays which appeared 
				in The International: "Cocaine", 
				"The Ouija Board", "Concerning Death", "Pax Hominibus Bonae 
				Voluntatis", "Geomancy", "Absinthe", 
				"De Thaumaturgia", "Ecclesiae Gnosticae Canon Missae". Of these,
				Liber XV, its scope and purpose, I have already described 
				at length.) The point which I wish to bring out is that despite 
				the constraint imposed upon me by the requirements of public 
				taste, I succeeded in proclaiming the Law to a wide audience of 
				selected readers, explaining its main principles and general 
				import in straightforward language, and also in putting over a 
				large amount of what was on the surface quite ordinary 
				literature, but implying the Law of Thelema as the basis of 
				right thought and conduct. In this way I managed to insinuate my 
				message perhaps more effectively than could possibly have been 
				done by any amount of visible argument and persuasion. The 
				Scrutinies of Simon Iff are perfectly good detective 
				stories, yet they not only show a master of the Law as competent 
				to solve the subtlest problems by considerations based upon the 
				Law, but the way in which crime and unhappiness of all sorts may 
				be traced to a breach of the Law. I show that failure to comply 
				with it involves an internal conflict. (Note that the 
				fundamental principle of psychoanalysis is that neurosis is 
				caused by failure to harmonize the elements of character.) The 
				essence of the Law is the establishment of right relations 
				between any two things which come into contact: the essence of 
				such relations being "love under will". The only way to keep out 
				of trouble is to understand and therefore to love every 
				impression of which one becomes conscious. 
				     — The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.  
				New York, NY.  Hill and Wang, 1969.  Page 828.   |  |