Israel Regardie - The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic.pdf

THE COMPLETE GOLDEN DAWN SYSTEM OF MAGIC
Do you wish to set yourself up to be admired as an Infallible One by acquiring much
knowledge? Then the revelation of fallible possibilities on the parts of the highest "authorities" you
know - if you are a Theosophist - will set you back a little, and possibly out. And if you twist and
squirm in the effort to prove the infallibility of your gods, that identifies your degree of intellectual
honesty. That's the sort of thing they want to know.
Are you prejudiced racially and nationally? Then the program of universal brotherhood will
steer you far away.
Are you narrow-minded, fastidious, finicky, and given to taking the form for the substance'?
Then a little swearing will take care of you.
Are you mentally lazy? Then the effort to untangle those peculiar books and make sense of them
will take adequate care of you. No mentally lazy person can understand the occult world, let alone the
visible one.
Are your interests narrow? Then the help you will need from all available human sources won't
be there - you are uninterested in too much of it. You will find yourself in one blind alley or the other.
Do you think the kingdom of heaven can be gained by physical observances, and that a meateater
is a lower animal? Then a few eggs in gravy will eliminate you nicely; if that won't do it, a few
packs of cigarettes will take care of it. Especially when you find that one of the Mahatmas smoked a
pipe.
It has often been asked, why, with all the resources and wisdom of the Mahatmas, was H.P.B.
left to struggle in poverty and illness? As we have seen, she was accused -though no individual ever came
forward to complain - of getting rich on the credulity of her followers. Suppose she had been richly
maintained? Moncure Conway, the missionary, mentions her "richly furnished" apartment. No doubt
the furniture had been expensive - before her wealthy friends gave it to her when they got new stuff.
She never starved for food, that is certain; she always did have enough - just enough - money - to do
what she had to do. As to health - we can lay that in part to herself. She did break all the rules of diet, and
possibly not all because of thyroid trouble and the rest; she was a hardheaded, intractable party. She
knew all the rules. If she chose to break them, the Mahatmas couldn't do anything about it. Of course,
they could have "fired" her, but then she was the only agent able to do what they had in mind.
The queer thing about these questions is that they are often from Christians, whose own God
left his only Son to live in hardship and poverty and die in horror.
If you have to test out the morals of a tribe of savages, to see whether it is ready to haul its snout
out of the mud and take the road to civilization, a good way is to drop a sick child of the same race but
another tribe into the village compound. They may kill it with a club, throw it on the fire, torture it with
sharp sticks, eat it, or pick it up and care for it. If they do anything but the last, you leave - quickly - and
wait a hundred years until the tribe has outgrown its land and impinged on the territory of a bigger one.
It may then appreciate
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