ζ Altera de Via Naturae from the Book of Wisdom or Folly in The Libri of Aleister Crowley

“by a peculiar Ordinance of Heaven, and a Disposition occult within his Mind, is every Man protected from this Loss of his own Soul, until and unless he be by Choronzon disintegrated and dispersed beyond power of Will to repair; as when the Conflict within him, rending and burning, hath made his Mind utterly desert, and his Soul Madness.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “even now we find great Churchmen, Statesmen, Princes, Dramamakers, and many lesser Men, overwhelmed utterly and ruined by the conflict between their Passions and the Society about them.”
  2. “Burn Thou strange herbs, O God! Brew me a magic liquor, boys, with your glances! The very soul is drunken. Thou art drunken, O my God, upon my kisses. The Universe reels; Thou hast looked upon it. Twice, and all is done. Come, O my God, and let us embrace! Lazily, hungrily, ardently, patiently; so will I work. There shall be an End.”
  3. “Any one who has any experience of any mystical state of the soul knows how there float up in the mind profound symbols, whose meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream that they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years.”
  4. “Know that herein the Relations between Numbers, though they be mighty in Power and prodigal of Knowledge, are but lesser Things.”
  5. “the Work is to reduce all other conceptions to these of Number, because thus thou wilt lay bare the very Structure of thy Mind, whose rule is Necessity rather than Prejudice.”