3y8u4hFD4

THE TREE OF LIFE
Normally, we are so personal, and so attached to all things egoic that
in ordinary conversation we are more eager to talk about ourselves,
and the phrases " I did this," and " I did that " enter more fully
into speech than almost any other. Hence in the beginning, when
the benefits of judicious silence are very forcibly conveyed to the
personality, the arm suffers in no little way. It may even be necessary
to resort to the decoration of both forearms before the rebellious
ego and its voice respond to training, deciding to obey forthwith
the dictates of the \Vill.
The conscquence is obvious. As time progresses through this
technique the Magician accomplishes two separate things, both of
them being major aspects of tlle Great Work. A perpetual vigilance
approximating to a most powerful current of \\'ill-power has been
generated. This, from the beginning, tends to bring the nlultifarious
activities of the human being under conscious control of the Will.
If, as tlie Abbk Constante so accurately observed, magical opera-
'tions are the exercise of a power which though natural is superior
to the common forces of nature, that power being the result of a
knowledge and a discipline exalting the will beyond its normal
limits, then this practice fulfils in the most conceivable way
all the requirements that even he would have demanded of it.
And the advantage of this to the Keophyte who has sworn
himself to the attainment of no less than the Knowledge and
Conversation of the Holy One, the Angel that guardeth him,
cannot be overestimated. In his hancls is placed a tremendous
power of Will, spiritual in its significance, inconceivably creative
in its application.
The second aspcct of accomplishment is that not only does the
Magician find himself in possession of an enhanced il'ill, but that
the Rzlnch itself, all the faculties comprised in the ego previously
so troublesome and lacking in concentration, has gradually, because
of the dynamic Will and the shrinking from bodily pain, placed
itself under control. The Practitioner will have survived the preliminary
horror and dislilie of inflicting this slight penalty upon his
arm, seeing his body for the first time in its proper place, as a
servant to be used and commanded, and whose rebellious refusals
to obey orders issuing fro111 a higher source are sternly to be reprimanded
and penalized. It is sincerely to be hoped that the basis
of this technique will not be so misunderstood as to elicit crass
remarks concerning I-Iatha Yoga or ~Iasochism. There is no pleasure