The supreme and absolute injunction, the crux of your knightly oath, is that you lay your lance in rest to the glory of your Lady, the Queen of the Stars, Nuit. Your knighthood depends upon your refusal to fight in any lesser cause.
Aleister Crowley, New Comment on I:52, Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law
This point being established, let me further make a distinction between the two great classes of sodomites. Ulrichs has pedantically christened them Urning and Uranodioning; for the former we have no colloquial name: the latter we term Bimetallist. Being himself an Urning, he has naturally failed to grasp the vast gap that divides the classes, which is that between an indulgence and a morbid craving; between the insane delusion that one is Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar and the sane and healthy resolve to emulate the exploits of these worthies in mysticism and war respectively. We pity the Urning, as we pity the consumptive or the drunkard; but we do not pity him in any special sense, any more than a connoisseur of fine wines pities the drunkard above all other pitiable folk. We do not acknowledge any nervous weakness as having a peculiar claim on us, just because it lies in the same plane as one of our hobbies.
Aleister Crowley, Bagh I Muattar, The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz
Furthermore that I will perform all practical work connected with this Order, in a place concealed … that I will keep secret this inner Rosicrucian Knowledge … that I will only perform any practical magic before the uninitiated which is of a simple and already well-known nature, and that I will show them no secret mode of working whatsoever.
Ritual of the 5○ = 6□ Grade of Adeptus Minor, the Ritual of the Order of Rosæ Rubeæ Et Aureæ Crusis at Aleister Crowley, “The Adept” in The Temple of Solomon the King, Book II, continued, serialized in The Equinox.
I only desire to know the truth for the sake of the truth, and not for the purpose of obtaining any selfish advantage. Teach me these secrets, and I will forget my own self, and devote my life to benefit the universal brotherhood of humanity.
Franz Hartmann, With The Adepts [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library, Hermetic Library]
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 exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.
Aleister Crowley, Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae sub figurâ VI
Not without good reason does our catechism assert that Masonry contains “many and invaluable secrets.” But these of course are not the formal and symbolic signs, tokens and words communicated ceremonially to candidates; they are rather those secrets which we instinctively keep locked up in the recesses and safe repository of our hearts; secrets of the deep and hidden things of the soul, about which we do not often talk, and which, by a natural instinct, we are not in the habit of communicating to any but such of our brethren and fellows as share with us a common and a sympathetic interest in the deeper problems and mysteries of life.
W L Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Masonry, Chapter II Masonry as a Philosophy
Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.
Ursula K Le Guin introducing Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly common-place: to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of being miserable for misery’s sake, has been brought to great perfection in our days
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
You may also be surprised to find that some of the things you write on the list will actually come to pass, almost without your making any conscious effort to make them happen. If you acknowledge the power of the imagination to foster changes in perception and performance, it’s easy to see how having a Someday/Maybe list out in front of your conscious mind could potentially add many wonderful adventures to your life and work. We’re likely to seize opportunities when they arise if we’ve already identified and captured them as a possibility.
David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
