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devours the dead body of his beloved, in terms which do not shock us in English any more than such descriptions usually shock us in French. This is a very exceptional accomplishment, as anyone may realize who has read French novels in English.
Here is one of Mr. Crowley's typical climaxes:
The host is lifted up. Behold
The vintage spilt, the broken bread!
I feast upon the cruel cold
Pale body that was ripe and red.
Only her head, her palms, her feet,
I kissed all night, and did not eat.
"But had it not been for the garter, I might never have seen the star," Mr. Crowley says. Hence we look from the garter to the more starry part of Mr. Crowley's work, for he has learned a good deal about Eastern philosophy at first hand, which is well worth consideration. Captain Fuller describes "Crowleyanity" as being "the conscious communion with God on the part of an Atheist, a transcending of reason by scepticism of the instrument, and the limitation of scepticism by direct consciousness of the Absolute." He defines God later on as the Relation between man and the Absolute, and he says "it is the search after this relationship—God—that Crowley so frequently and ardently depicts." He cries in one place:
By the sun's heat, that brooks not his eclipse
And dissipates the welcome clouds of rain.
God! have Thou pity soon on this amazing pain.
And in another describes the mystic goal:
So shalt thou conquer Space, and lastly climb
The walls of Time;
And by the golden path the great have trod,
Reach up to God.
He grapples with the problems of human consciousness and has realized the absoluteness of zero. He perceives that when consciousness, as we know it, is absolutely indrawn, so that it exists in pure isolation, it knows an ecstasy which can only be expressed in the thought, "I do not exist." This last paradox of human manifestation has been perceived by every school of mystics. "Man's darkness is a leathern sheath, Myself the sun-bright sword," is the feeling of the consciousness as it returns to its human state, admirably expressed by Mr. Crowley in "Mysteries" (vol. i, p. 105). Finally he is driven to the utterance of one who has gained final liberation from human illusion:
So lifts the agony of the world
From this my head that bowed awhile
Before the terror suddenly shown.
The nameless fear for self, far hurled
By death to dissolution vile,
Fades as the royal truth is known:
Though change and sorrow range and roll,
There is no self—there is no soul.
The essay on Science and Buddhism (p. 244, vol. ii of The Collected Works) is valuable, proving as it does that Buddhistic philosophy is a logical development from observed facts. Captain Fuller declares that the Agnostic principles of "Crowleyanity" may be summed up as follows:
Believe nothing till you find it out for yourself.
Say not "I have a soul" before you feel that you have a soul.
Say not "There is a God" before you experience that there is a God.
You can never understand till you have experienced.
You can never experience till you get beyond reason.
In a word, his command to his followers is, Know or Doubt; do not believe. We are, he says, "surrounded with an appearance of Truth," and Reason is our guide. To become part of Wisdom we must leave Reason on one side. No doubt men differ