I do not think we were afraid of death; life had become such an infinitely boring alternation between a period of stimulation which failed to stimulate and of depression which hardly even depressed.

She it is, she, that found meIn the morphia honeymoon;With silk and steel she bound meIn her poisonous milk she drowned me,Even now her arms surround me

Shameful confession, one of my own Chelas (or so it is rather incredibly reported to me) said recently: “Self-discipline is a form of Restriction.” (That, you remember, is “The word of Sin.”) Of all the...

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.

There is great danger in this Golden Mean, one of whose main objects is to steer clear of shipwreck, Scylla being as fatal as Charybdis. No, this lofty and equable attitude is worse than wrong...

The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War.

Remember in any case, that not only the Adept, but anyone with the smallest capacity for Adeptship, is fundamentally an Artist; he will certainly not possess any of those bourgeois “virtues” which are just so...

Light, Life and Love are like three glow-worms at thy feet: the whole universe of stars, the dewdrops on the grass whereon thou walkest!

The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept...

I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. And I am Belial, for having seen the Rose upon thy breast,...

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.

For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn’t quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren’t such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when...

Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.

So sweet is this song that no one could resist it. For in it is all the passionate ache for the moonlight, and the great hunger of the sea, and the terror of desolate places,—all...

The nails from a suicide’s coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

Thou hast no right but to do thy will… For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

The love and war in the previous injunctions are of the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns from the opponent, but never interferes with him, outside the actual game. To seek to dominate...

On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant;...

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [….] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

Now there is naught but a vast black triangle having the apex downwards, and in the centre of the black triangle is the face of Typhon, the Lord of the Tempest, and he crieth aloud:...

The word of sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is...

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a...

I’m a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.

No recorded vision is perfect, of high visions, for the seer must keep either his physical organs or his memory in working order. And neither is capable. There is no bridge. One can only be...

It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system;...

The mystic’s idea of deliberately stupefying and stultifying himself is an “abomination unto the Lord.” This, by the way, does not conflict with the rules of Yoga. That kind of suppression is comparable to the...

To resist and subdue Nature is to make for one’s self a personal and imperishable life: it is to break free from the vicissitudes of Life and Death.

Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.

We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than...

Stab your demoniac smile to my brain,Soak me in cognac, love, and cocaine

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses....

To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected...

Those, therefore, who effect to despise “profane” Science are themselves despicable. It is their own incapacity for true Thought of any serious kind, their vanity and pertness; nay more also! their own subconsciousness sense of...

I’ve often thought that there isn’t any “I” at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a...

Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.

Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting...

All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the...

The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume that our minds are identical with that of the writer, at...

The so-called poet with his vague dreams and ideals is indeed no better than a harmless lunatic; the true poet is the worker, who grips life’s throat and wrings out its secret, who selects austerely...

But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word “reason”...

Love in a night shall live and die,Love in a day shall wing and fly;Love in the Spring shall last an hour,Easily fade a spring-tide flower.

In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first condition which the Aspirant must fulfill: he must once and for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle.Even the Gospels...

We [of Thelema] are whole-hearted extroverts; the penalty of restricting oneself is anything from neurosis to down right lunacy; in particular, melancholia.

O bid these strangers go ;Turn to my lips till their cup overflow ;Hurt me with kisses, kill me with desire,Consume me and destroy me with the fireOf bleeding passion straining at the heart,Touched to...

Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, “reds,” foxhunters,...

Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever;...

…in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these...