ELEUSIS

BY ALEISTER CROWLEY

First published in volume iii

of Crowley‟s Collected Works (1907)
Key entry and formatting by Frater T.S.
originally for Sunwheel Oasis, O.T.O

This e-text last revised February 2018

I forbid thee to weep or to worship;
I forbid thee to sing or to write!
The Star-Goddess guideth us her ship;
The sails belly out with the light.
Beautiful head!
We will sing on our bed
Of the beautiful law of the Night!

We are lulled by the whirr of the stars;

We are fanned by the whisper, the wind;
We are locked in unbreakable bars,
The love of the spirit and mind
The infinite powers
Of rapture are ours;
We are one, and our kisses are kind.

—from Orpheus by Aleister Crowley.

 EPILOGUE AND DEDICATION
November 18, 1906.
MY DEAR ION,—I address you by the unfamiliar title in giving you, a man self-damned,
God knows how unjustly, as the author of the phrase, “I am not an appreciator of
poetry, and I have no Keats,” these volumes. For the matter thereof is already in great
part yours and as such cannot be given. The rest I offer because it is hardly possible
to close definitely, as I do now, a period of many years‟ work, without reflecting on
that period as a whole. And, when I do so, I find you at the beginning like Ladas or
Pheidippides of old, running—ready to run until you achieve the goal or your heart
burst; but you are among a crowd. I join you. Eight years ago this day you, Hermes,
led me blindfold to awake a chosen runner of the course. “In all my wanderings in
darkness your light shone before me though I knew it not.” To-day (one may almost
hope, turning into the straight) you and I are alone. Terrible and joyous! We shall
find companions at the End, at the banquet, lissome and cool and garlanded;
companions with a Silver Star or maybe a Jewelled Eye mobile and uncertain—as if
alive—on their foreheads. We shall be bidden to sit, and they will wreathe us with
immortal flowers, and give us to drink of the seemly wine of Iacchus—well! but until
then, unless my heart deceive me, no third shall appear to join us. Indeed, may two
attain? It seems a thing impossible in nature. May it not be that—near as the
resounding roar of the viewless spectators sounds to our dust-dimmed ears—there
stands some awful opposer in the way, some fear or some seduction? Why do you
grip that bar in your left hand? Do not this loin-cloth irk my limbs? We should have
shaved our heads before the race—the curls are moist and heavy! Why did we cumber
ourselves with sandals? Long ere now our feet would have grown hard. Well, if my
heart burst, it bursts; you must give these volumes to the young athletes, that they
may learn wherefore I failed—wherefore it was given to me to run thus far. For, if I
have put nothing else therein, most surely that is there.
ALEISTER CROWLEY

1
 EPILOGUE AND DEDICATION OF
VOLUMES I., II., III.

ELEUSIS.
THOSE who are most familiar with the spirit of fair play which pervades our great
public schools will have no difficultly, should they observe, in an obscure corner, the
savage attack of Jones minor upon Robinson minimus, in deducing that the former
has only just got over the “jolly good hiding” that Smith major had so long promised
him, the determining factor of the same being Smith‟s defeat by Brown maximus
behind the chapel, after Brown‟s interview with the Head-Master.
We are most of us aware that cabinet ministers, bishops, and dons resemble each
other in the important particular that all are still schoolboys, and their differences
but the superficial one produced by greasing, soaping, and withering them
respectively; so that it will meet with instant general approval if I open this paper by
the remark that Christianity, as long as it flourished, was content to assimilate
Paganism, never attacking it until its own life had been sapped by the insidious
heresies of Paul.
Time passed by, and they bullied Manes and Cerinthus; history repeated itself
until it almost knew itself by heart; finally, at the present day, some hireling parasites
of the decaying faith—at once the origin and the product of that decay—endeavour to
take advantage of the “Greek movement” or the “Neo-pagan revival” in the vain
hope of diverting the public attention from the phalanx of Rationalism—traitorously
admitted by Luther, and now sitting crowned and inexpugnable in the very citadel of
the faith —to their own dishonest lie that Paganism was a faith whose motto was
“Carpe diem,” 1 and whose methods were drink, dance, and Studio Murder. 2 Why is
Procopius cleaner than Petronius? Even a Julian could confute this sort of thing ;
but are we to rest for ever in negation? No: a Robinson minimus ipse will turn,
and it is quite time that science was given a chance to measure itself against bulk. I
shall not be content with giving Christian apologists the lie direct, but proceed to
convict them of the very materialism against which they froth. In a word, to-day
Christianity is the irreligion of the materialist, or if you like, the sensualist; while in
Paganism, we may find the expression of that ever-haunting love—nay, necessity!—of
the Beyond which tortures and beautifies those of us who are poets.
p£nta kaqar¦ to‹j kaqaro‹j—and, while there is no logical break between the
apparently chaste dogma of the Virgin Birth and the horrible grossness of R. P.
Sanchez in his De Matrimonio, Lib. ii. Cap. xxi., “Utium Virgo Maria semen emiserit
in copulatione cum Spiritu Sancto,” so long as we understand an historical
1
“Gather ye roses!” is the masterpiece of a Christian clergyman.—A. C.
2
A peculiarly gross case of psychopathic crime which occurred in 1906.
 E LE US I S 3
Incarnation: the accomplishment of that half of the Magnum Opus which is glyphed
in the mystic aphorism “Solve!” enables an Adept of that standing to see nothing but
pure symbol and holy counsel in the no grosser legends of the Greeks. This is not a
matter of choice: reason forbids us to take the Swan-lover in its literal silliness and
obscenity; but, on the other hand, the Bishops will not allow us to attach a pure
interpretation to the precisely similar story of the Dove.1
So far am I, indeed, from attacking Christian symbolism as such, that I am quite
prepared to admit that it is, although or rather because it is the lowest, the best.
Most others, especially Hinduism and Bud-dhism, lose themselves in metaphysical
speculations only proper to those who are already Adepts.
The Rosicrucian busies himself with the Next Step, for himself and his pupils; he is
no more concerned to discuss Nibbana than a schoolmaster to “settle the doctrine of
the enclitic DÁ” in the mind of a child who is painfully grappling with the declension
of Nean…aj. We can even read orthodox Christian writers with benefit (such is the
revivifying force of our Elixir) by seeking the essence in the First Matter of the Work;
and we could commend many of them, notably St. Ignatius and even the rationalising
Mansel and Newman, if they would only concentrate upon spiritual truth, instead of
insisting on the truth of things, material and therefore immaterial, which only need
the touch of a scholar‟s wand to crumble into the base dust from which their
bloodstained towers arose.
Whoso has been crucified with Christ can but laugh when it is proved that Christ
was never crucified. The historian understands nothing of what we mean, either by
Christ or by crucifixion, and is thus totally in-competent to criticise our position.
On the other hand, we are of course equally ill-placed to convert him; but then we
do not wish to do so, certainly not quâ historian. We leave him alone. Whoso
hath ears to hear, let him hear! and the first and last ordeals and rewards of the
Adept are comprised in the maxim “Keep silence!”
There should be no possible point of contact between the Church and the world:
Paul began the ruin of Christianity, but Constantine completed it. The Church
which begins to exteriorise is already lost. To control the ethics of the state is to
adopt the ethics of the state: and the first duty of the state will be to expel the
rival god Religion. In such a cycle we in England seem to be now revolving, and
the new forced freedom of the Church is upon us.
If only the destruction is sufficiently complete, if only all England will turn Atheist,
we may perhaps be able to find some Christians here and there. As long as “church”
means either a building, an assembly, or even has any meaning at all of a kind to be
intelligible to the ordinary man, so long is Christ rejected, and the Pharisee supreme.
1
Recently, a certain rash doctor publicly expressed his doubts whether any Bishop of the
twentieth century was so filthy-minded a fool. They were, however, soon dispelled by telegrams from
a considerable section of the entire Bench, couched in emphatic language.
4 E LE US I S
Now the materialism which has always been the curse of Christianity was no
doubt partly due to the fact that the early diciples were poor men. You cannot bribe
a rich man with loaves and fishes: only the overfed long for the Simple Life. True,
Christ bought the world by the promise of Fasts and Martyrdoms, glutted as it was by
its surfeit of Augustan glories; but the poor were in a vast majority, and snatched
greedily at all the gross pleasures and profits of which the educated and wealthy were
sick even unto death. Further, the asceticism of surfeit is a false passion, and only
lasts until a healthy hunger is attained; so that the change was an entire corruption,
without redeeming aspect. Had there been five righteous men in Rome, a Cato, a
Brutus, a Curtius, a Scipio, and a Julian, nothing would have occurred; but there was
only the last, and he too late. No doubt Maximus, his teacher, was too holy an Adept
to mingle in the affairs of the world; one indeed, perhaps, about to pass over to a
higher sphere of action: such speculation is idle and impertinent; but the world was
ruined, as never before since the fabled destruction of Atlantis, and I trust that I shall
take my readers with me when I affirm to proud a belief in the might of the heart
whose integrity is unassailable, clean of all crime, that I lay it down as a positive
dictum that only by the decay in the mental and moral virility of Rome and not
otherwise, was it possible for the slavish greed and anarchy of the Faith of Paul to gain
a foothold. This faith was no new current of youth, sweeping away decadence: it was a
force of the slime: a force with no single salutary germ of progress inherent therein.
Even Mohammedanism, so often accused of materialism, did produce, at once, and
in consequence, a revival of learning, a crowd of algebraists, astronomers,
philosophers, whose names are still to be revered: but within the fold, from the death
of Christ to the Renaissance—a purely pagan movement—we hear no more of art,
literature, or philosophy.1 But we do hear—well, what Gibbon has to say.
There is surely a positive side to all this; we agree that Pagans must have been more
spiritual than their successors, if only because themselves openly scoffed at their
mythology without in the least abandoning the devout performance of its rites, while
the Christian clung to irrelevant historical falsehood as if it were true and important.
But it is justifiable—nay, urgent—to inquire how and why? Which having discovered,
we are bound to proceed with the problem: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse
his way?” receive the answer: “By taking heed thereto according to thy word,” and
interpret “thy word” as “The Works of Aleister Crowley.”
But this is to anticipate; let us answer the first question by returning to our
phrase “The Church that exteriorises is already lost.” On that hypothesis, the decay of
Paganism was accomplished by the very outward and visible sign of its inward and
1
Such philosophy as does exist is entirely vicious, taking it axioms no more from observed fact,
but from “Scripture” or from Aristotle. Barring such isolated pagans as M. Aurelius Antoninus, and
the neo-Platonists, those glorious decadents* of paganism.
[* See note on next page.]
 E LE US I S 5
spiritual grace, the raising of massive temples to the Gods in a style and manner to
which history seeks in vain a parallel. Security is mortals‟ chiefest enemy; so also the
perfection of balanced strength which enabled Hwang-sze to force his enemies to
build the Great Wall was the mark of the imminent decay of his dynasty and race—
truly a terrible “Writing on the Wall.” An end to the days of the Nine Sages; an
end to the wisdoms of Lao Tan on his dun cow ; an end to the making of classics of
history and of odes and of ethics, to the Shu King and the Shih King, and the Li-
Ki and the mysterious glories of the holy Yi King itself! Civilisation, decadence, and the
slime. Still the Great Wall keeps the Barbarians from China: it is the wall that the
Church of Christ set up against science and philosophy, and even to-day its ruins
stand, albeit wrapped in the lurid flames of Hell. It is the law of life, this cycle;
decadence is perfection, and the perfect soul is assumed into the bosom of Nephthys,
so that for a while the world lies fallow. It is in failing to see this constant fume of
incense rising from the earth that pessimistic philosophies make their grand
fundamental error : in that, and in assuming the very point in dispute, the nature of
the laws of other worlds and the prospects of the individual soul. Confess, O subtle
author, that thou thyself art even now in the same trap! Willingly, reader these slips

[Note continues from previous page] * Decadence marks the period when the adepts, nearing their
earthly perfection, become true adepts, not mere men of genius. They disappear, harvested by heaven:
and perfect darkness (apparent death) ensues until the youthful forerunners of the next crop begin
to shoot in the form of artists. Diagrammatically:

Deca- Slime.
dence.
Adepts
TIME  Adepts invisible Renaissance, etc.
Renaissance. Adepts, as to all.
as Artists, Philosophers, Adepts.
Men of Science, &c. They
More or less recognised appear,
(sooner or later) as great but as
men. fools
and
knaves.
By the Progress of the World we mean that she is always giving adepts to God, and thus losing
them; yet, through their aid, while they are still near enough to humanity to attract it, she reaches
each time a higher point. Yet this point is never very high; so that Aeschylus, though in fact more
ignorant than our schoolboys, holds his seat besides Ibsen and Newton in the Republic of the
Adepti—a good horse, but not to be run too hard.—A.C.
6 E LE US I S
happen when, although one cannot prove to others, one knows.1 Thou too shall
know, an thou wilt:—ask how, and we come suddenly back to our subject, just as a
dreamer may wander through countless nightmares, to find himself in
the end on the top of a precipice, whence falling, he shall find himself in bed.
Hear wisdom! the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
A man is almost obliged to be in communion with God when God is blowing his
hat off, drenching him to the skin, whistling through his very bones, scaring him
almost to death with a flash of lightning, and so on. When he gets time to think, he
thinks just that. In a church all is too clearly the work of man: in the matter of man‟s
comfort man‟s devices are so obviously superior to God‟s: so that we compare hats
and languidly discuss the preacher.
Religion is alive in Wales, because people have to walk miles to chapel.
Religion is alive among Mohammedans, who pray (as they live) out of doors, and
who will fight and die for their ideas; and among Hindus, whose bloody sacrifices
bring them daily face to face with death.
Pan-Islam is possible; pan-Germany is possible; but pan-Christendom would be
absurd. There were saints in the times of the Crusades, and Crusaders in the times of
the Saints: for though the foe was more artificial than real, and the object
chimerical, a foe and an aim of whatever sort assist the concentration which alone is
life.
So that we need not be surprised to see as we do that religion is dead in London,
where it demands no greater sacrifice than that of an hour‟s leisure in the week, and
even offers to repay that with social consideration for the old, and opportunities of
flirtation for the young.
The word “dear” has two senses, and these two are one.
Pressing the “out-of-doors” argument, as we may call it, I will challenge each of my
readers to a simple experiment.
Go out one night to a distant and lonely heath, if no mountain summit is available:
then at midnight repeat the Lord‟s Prayer, or any invocation with which you
happen to be familiar, or one made up by yourself, or one consisting wholly of
senseless and barbarous words.1 Repeat it solemnly and aloud, expectant of some
great and mysterious result.
1
Let me run wild for once, I beg; I am tired of emulating Mr. Storer Clouston‟s Sir Julian
Wallingford, “whose reasoning powers were so remarkable that he never committed the slightest
action without furnishing a full and adequate explanation of his conduct.”—A. C.
1
I am ashamed to say that I have devoted considerable time to the absurd task of finding
meanings for, and tracing the corruptions of, the “barbarous names of evocation” which occur
in nearly all conjurations, and which Zoroaster warns his pupils not to change, be-cause “they are
names divine, having in the sacred rites a power ineffable.”
The fact is that many such names are indeed corruptions of divine names. We may trace Eheieh
in Eie, Abraxas in Abrae, Tetragrammaton in Jehovah.
 E LE US I S 7
I pledge myself, if you have a spark of religion in you, that is, if you are properly a
human being, that you will (at the very least) experience a deeper sense of spiritual
communion than you have ever obtained by any course of church-going.
After which you will, if you are worth your salt, devote your time to the
development of this communion, and to the search for an instructed master who can
tell you more than I can.
Now the earlier paganism is simply over-flowing with this spirit of communion.
The boy goes down to the pool, musing, as boys will; is it strange that a nymph should
reward him, sometimes even with wine from the purple vats of death?
Poor dullards! in your zeal to extinguish the light upon our altars you have had to
drench your own with the bitter waters of most general unbelief. Where are the
witches and the fairies and the angels, and the visions of divine St. John? You
are annoyed at my mention of angels and witches; because you know yourselves to
be sceptics, and that I have any amount of “scriptural warrant” to throw at your
heads, if I deigned; you are all embarrassed when Maude Adams leans over the
footlights with a goo-goo accent so excessive that you die of diabetes in a week and
asks you point-blank: “Do you believe in fairies?” while, for your visions, you do
not go to St. John‟s Island, and share his exile; but to his Wood, and waste your
money.
The early pagan worships Demeter in dim groves : there is silence ; there is no
organisation of ritual ; there the worship is spontaneous and individual. In short, the
work of religion is thrown upon the religious faculty, instead of being delegated to the
quite inferior and irrelevant faculties of mere decorum or even stagecraft. A Christian
of the type of Browning understands this perfectly. True, he approves the sincerity
which he finds to pervade the otherwise disgusting chapel ; but he cares nothing
whatever for the “raree-show of Peter‟s successor,” and though I daresay his ghost will

But this, an initiate knows, is quite contrary to the true theory.

It is because the names are senseless that they are effective. If a man is really praying he cannot bring
himself to utter ridiculous things to his god, just as Mark Twain observes that one “cannot pray a lie.”
So that it is a sublime test of faith to utter either a lie or a jest, this with reverence, and that with
conviction. Achieve it; the one becomes the truth, the other a formula of power. Hence the real
value of the Egyptian ritual by which the theurgist identified himself with the power he invoked.
Modern neophytes should not (we think) use the old conjurations with their barbarous names,
because, imperfectly understanding the same, they may superstitiously attribute some real power to
them ; we should rather advise “Jack and Jill went up the hill,” “From Greenland‟s icy mountains,”
and such, with which it is impossible for the normal mind to associate a feeling of reverence.
What may be the mode of operation of this formula concerns us little; enough if it succeeds. But
one may suggest that it is a case of the will running free, i.e. un-checked, as it normally is, by the
hosts of critical larvæ we call reason, habit, sensation, and the like.
But the will freed from these may run straight and swift; if its habitual goal has been the
attainment of Samadhi, it may under such circumstances reach it. It will require a very advanced
student to use this type of faith. The Lord‟s Prayer and the minor exaltation are the certainties for
this event.—A. C.
8 E LE US I S
be shocked and annoyed by mention of the fact, Browning himself does not get his
illumination in any human temple, but only when he is out with the universe alone in
the storm.
Nor does Browning anywhere draw so perfect and credible a picture of the inter-
course between man and God as the exquisite vision of Pan in “Pheidippides.” It is all
perfectly natural and therefore miraculous; there is no straining at the gnats of
vestment in the hope of swallowing the camel of Illumination.
In the matter of Pentecost, we hear only, in the way of the “conditions of the
experiment,” that “they were all with one accord in one place.” Now, this being the
only instance in the world‟s history of more than two people in one place being of one
accord, it is naturally also the only instance of a miracle that happened in church.
The Quakers, arguing soundly enough that women were such a cause of contention
chiefly on account of their tongues, and getting a glimpse of these truths which I have
so laboriously been endeavouring to expound, hoped for inspiration from the effects
of silence alone, and strove (even by a symbolic silence in costume) to repeat the
experiment of Pentecost.
But they lacked the stimulus of Syrian air, and that of the stirring times of the
already visible sparks of national revolt: they should have sought to replace these
by passing the bottle round in their assemblies, and something would probably have
happened, an ‟twere only a raid of the police.
Better get forty shillings or a month than live and die as lived and died John Bright!
Better be a Shaker, or a camp-meeting homunculus, or a Chatauqua gurl, or a
Keswick week lunatic, or an Evan Roberts revivalist, or even a common maniac, than
a smug Evangelical banker‟s clerk with a greasy wife and three gifted children—to be
bank clerks after him!
Better be a flagellant, or one who dances as David danced before the Lord, than a
bishop who is universally respected, even by the boys he used to baste when he was
headmaster of a great English public school !
That is, if religion is your aim : if you are spiritually minded : if you interpret every
phenomenon that is presented to your sensorium as a particular dealing of God with
your soul.
But if you come back from the celebration of the Eucharist and say, “Mr. Hogwash
was very dull to-day,” you will never get to heaven, where the good poets live, and
nobody else; nor to hell, whose inhabitants are exclusively bad poets.
There is more hope for a man who should go to Lord‟s and say he saw the angels of
God ascending and descending upon C.B. Fry.
It is God who sees the possibility of Light in Chaos; it is the Church who
blaspheme the superb body of Truth which Adepts of old enshrined in the Cross, by
degrading the Story of the Crucifixion to a mere paragraph in the Daily Mail of the
time of Pontius Pilate.
 E LE US I S 9
Bill Blake took tea with Ezekiel: Tennyson saw no more in the Arthurian legends
than a prophecy of the Prince Consort (though Lancelot has little in common with
John Brown), and the result of all is that Tennyson is dead and buried—as shown by
the fact that he is still popular—and Blake lives, for poets read and love him.
Now when Paganism became popular, organised, state-regulated, it ceased to be
individual: that is to say, it ceased to exist as a religion, and became a social
institution little better than the Church which has replaced it. But initiates—men
who had themselves seen God face to face, and lived—preserved the vital essence.
They chose men; they tested them; they instructed them in methods of invoking the
Visible Image of the Invisible. Thus by a living chain religion lives—in the Mysteries of
Eleusis.
Further, recognising that the Great Work was henceforth to be secret, a worship of
caverns and midnight groves and catacombs, no more of smiling fields and open
bowers, they caused to be written in symbols by one of the lesser initiates the whole
Mystery of Godliness, so that after the renaissance those who were fitted to the Work
might infallibly discover the first matter of the Work and even many of the processes
thereof.
Such writings are those of the neo-Platonists, and in modern times the God-
illumined Adept Berkeley, Christian though he called himself, is perhaps the most dis-
tinguished of those who have understood this truth. 1
But the orthodox Christian, confronted with this fact, is annoyed; just as the
American, knowing himself to be of the filthiest dregs of mankind, pretends that
there is no such thing as natural aristocracy, though to be sure he gives himself away
badly enough when confronted with either a nigger or a gentleman, since to
ape dominance is the complement of his natural slavishness. So the blind groveller,
Mr. Conformity, and his twin, Mr.Nonconformity, agree to pretend that initiates are
always either dupes or impostors; they deny that man can see God and live. Look!
There goes John Compromise to church, speculating, like Lot‟s wife, on the probable
slump in sulphur and the gloomy outlook for the Insurance Companies. It will never
do for his Christ to be a man of like passions with himself, else people might expect
him to aim at a life like Christ‟s. He wants to wallow and swill, and hope for an
impossible heaven.
So that it will be imprudent of you (if you want to be asked out to dinner) to
point out that if you tell the story of the life of Christ, without mentioning names, to
a Musulman, he will ask, “ What was the name of that great sheikh?” to a Hindu,
“Who was this venerable Yogi?” to a Buddhist, “Haven‟t you made a mistake or
two? It wasn‟t a dove, but an elephant with six tusks; and He died of dysentery.”

1
[Long note on Berkeley moved to end.]
10 E LE US I S
The fact being that it is within the personal experience of all these persons that men
yet live and walk the earth who live in all essentials the life that Christ lived, to whom
all His miracles are commonplace, who die His death daily, and partake daily in the
Mysteries of His resurrection and ascension.
Whether this is scientifically so or not is of no importance to the argument. I am
not addressing the man of science, but the man of intelligence: and the scientist
himself will back me when I say that the evidence for the one is just as strong and
as weak as for the others. God forbid that I should rest this paper on a historical
basis! I am talking about the certain results of human psychology: and science can
neither help nor hinder me.
True, when Huxley and Tyndall were alive, their miserable intelligences were always
feeding us up with the idea that science might one day be able to answer some of the
simpler questions which one can put: but that was because of their mystical leanings;
they are dead, and have left no successors. To-day we have the certitude, “Science
never can tell,” of the laborious Ray Lankester
“Whose zeal for knowledge mocks the curfew‟s call
And after midnight, to make Lodge look silly,
Studies anatomy—in Piccadilly.”

Really, we almost echo his despair. When, only too many years ago, I was learning
chemistry, the text-books were content with some three pages on Camphor: to-day, a
mere abstract of what is known occupies 400 closely printed pages : but Knowledge
is in no wise advanced. It is no doubt more difficult to learn “Paradise Lost” by heart
than “We are Seven”; but when you have done it, you are no better at figure-skating.
I am not denying that the vast storehouses of fact do help us to a certain distillation
(as it were) of their grain: but I may be allowed to complain with Maudsley that there
is nobody competent to do it. Even when a genius does come along, his results will
likely be as empirical as the facts they cover. Evolution is no better than creation to
explain things, as Spencer showed.
The truth of the matter appears to be that as reason is incompetent to solve the
problems of philosophy and religion, à fortiori science is incompetent. All that science
can do is to present reason with new facts. To such good purpose has it done this,
that no modern scientist can hope to do more than know a little about one bud on
his pet twig of the particular branch he has chosen to study, as it hangs temptingly
from one bough of the Tree of Knowledge.
One of the most brilliant of the younger school of chemists remarks in the course
of a stirring discourse upon malt analysis: “Of extremely complex organic bodies the
constitution of some 250,000 is known with certainty, and the number grows daily.
No one chemist pretends to an intimate acquaintance with more than a few of these
. . .” Why not leave it alone, and try to be God?
 E LE US I S 11
But even had we Maudsley‟s committee of geniuses, should we be in any real sense
the better? Not while the reason is, as at present, the best guide known to men, not
until humanity has developed a mental power of an entirely different kind. For to the
philosopher it soon becomes apparent that reason is a weapon inadequate to the task.
Hume saw it, and became a sceptic in the widest sense of the term. Mansel saw it, and
counsels us to try Faith, as if it were not the very fact that Faith was futile that bade us
appeal to reason. Huxley saw it, and, no remedy presenting itself but a vague faith in
the possibilities of human evolution, called himself an agnostic: Kant saw it for a
moment, but it soon hid itself behind his terminology; Spencer saw it, and tried to
gloss it over by smooth talk, and to bury it beneath the ponderous tomes of his
unwieldy erudition.
I see it, too, and the way out to Life.
But the labyrinth, if you please, before the clue: the Minotaur before the maiden!
Thank you, madam; would you care to look at our new line in Minotaurs at 2s.
3d. ? This way, please.
I have taken a good deal of trouble lately to prove the proposition “All arguments
are arguments in a circle.” Without wearying my readers with the formal proof, which
I hope to advance one day in an essay on the syllogism, I will take (as sketchily as you
please!) the obvious and important case of the consciousness.
A. The consciousness is made up ex-clusively of impressions (The tendency to
certain impressions is itself a result of impressions on the ancestors of the conscious
being). Locke, Hume, &c.
B. Without a consciousness no impression can exist. Berkeley, Fichte, &c.
Both A. and B. have been proved times without number, and quite irrefutably. Yet
they are mutually exclusive. The “progress” of philosophy has consisted almost
entirely of advances in accuracy of language by rival schools who emphasised A. and
B. alternately.
It is easy to see that all propositions can, with a little ingenuity, be reduced to one
form or the other.1
Thus, if I say that grass is green, I mean that an external thing is an internal thing:
for the grass is certainly not in my eye, and the green certainly is in it. As all will
admit.
So, if you throw a material brick at your wife, and hit her (as may happen to all of
us), there is a most serious difficulty in the question, “At what point did your
(spiritual) affection for her transform into the (material) brick, and that again into her
(spiritual) reformation?”

1
Compare the problems suggested to the logician by the various readings of propositions in
connotation, denotation, and comprehension respectively; and the whole question of existential
import.—A. C.
12 E LE US I S
Similarly, we have Kant‟s clear proof that in studying the laws of nature we only
study the laws of our own minds: since, for one thing, the language in which we
announce a law is entirely the product of our mental conceptions.
While, on the other hand, it is clear enough that our minds depend on the laws
of nature, since, for one thing, the apprehension that six savages will rob and murder
you is immediately allayed by the passage of a leaden bullet weighing 230 grains, and
moving at the rate of 1200 feet per second, through the bodies of two of the ring-
leaders.
It would of course be simple to go on and show that after all we attach no meaning
to weight and motion, lead and bullet, but a purely spiritual one: that they are mere
phases of our thought, as interpreted by our senses: and on the other that
apprehension is only a name for a certain group of chemical changes in certain of the
contents of our very material skulls: but enough! the whole controversy is verbal, and
no more.
Since therefore philosophy and à fortiori science are bankrupt, and the official
receiver is highly unlikely to grant either a discharge; since the only aid we get from
the Bishops is a friendly counsel to drink Beer—in place of the spiritual wine of Omar
Khayyam and Abdullah el Haji (on whom be peace!)—we are compelled to fend for
ourselves.
We have heard a good deal of late years about Oriental religions. I am myself the
chief of sinners. Still, we all freely confess that they are in many ways picturesque:
and they do lead one to the Vision of God face to face, as one who hath so been led
doth here solemnly lift up his voice and testify; but their method is incredibly tedious,
and unsuited to most, if not all, Europeans. Let us never forget that no poetry of the
higher sort, no art of the higher sort, has ever been produced by any Asiatic race.
We are the poets! we are the children of wood and stream, of mist and mountain,
of sun and wind! We adore the moon and the stars, and go into the London streets
at midnight seeking Their kisses as our birthright. We are the Greeks—and God grant
ye all, my brothers, to be as happy in your loves!—and to us the rites of Eleusis
should open the doors of Heaven, and we shall enter in and see God face to face!
Alas!
“None can read the text, not even I;
And none can read the comment but myself.” 1
The comment is the Qabalah, and that I have indeed read as deeply as my poor
powers allow: but the text is decipherable only under the stars by one who hath
drunken of the dew of the moon.

1
Tennyson must have stolen these lines; they are simply and expressive.
 E LE US I S 13
Under the stars will I go forth, my brothers, and drink of that lustral dew: I
will return, my brothers, when I have seen God face to face, and read within those
eternal eyes the secret that shall make you free.
Then will I choose you and test you and instruct you in the Mysteries of Eleusis, oh
ye brave hearts, and cool eyes, and trembling lips! I will put a live coal upon your lips,
and flowers upon your eyes, and a sword in your hearts, and ye also shall see God face
to face.
Thus we shall we give back its youth to the world, for like tongues of triple flame
we shall brood upon the Great Deep—Hail unto the Lords of the Groves of Eleusis!
*** ***** ***
[Follows long note from p. 9[
EXTRACTS FROM BERKELEY‟S EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK OF THE
LIFE SACRED MAGIC OF ABRAMELIN THE
MAGE
[1] “There is a mystery about this visit to I resolved to absent myself suddenly and go
Dublin. „I propose to set out for Dublin about a away . . . and lead a solitary life.
month hence,‟ he writes to „dear Tom,‟ „but of
this you must not give the least intimation to any
one. It is of all things my earnest desire (and
for very good reason) not to have it known I am
in Dublin. Speak not, therefore, one syllable of I am about here to set down in writing the
it to any mortal whatsoever. When I formerly difficulties, temptations, and hindrances which
desired of you to take a place for me near the will be caused him by his own relations . . .
town, you gave out that you were looking for a beforehand thou shouldst arrange thine affairs
retired lodging for a friend of yours; upon in such wise that they can in no way hinder
which everybody surmised me to be the thee, nor bring thee any disquietude.
person. I must beg you not to act in the like
manner now—but to take for me an entire house
in your own name, and as for yourself; for all
things considered, I am determined upon a
whole house, with no mortal in it but a maid I took another house at rent . . . and I
of your own getting, who is to look on herself gave over unto one of my uncles the care of
as your servant. Let there be two bedrooms; providing the necessaries of life.
one for you, another for me, and as you like
you may ever and anon lie there.
“ „I would have the house with necessary
furniture taken by the month (or otherwise as
you can), for I propose staying not beyond that
time, and yet perhaps I may.
“ „Take it as soon as possible. . . . Let me
entreat you to say nothing of this to anybody,
but to do the thing directly. . . . I would of all
things have a proper place in a retired situation, “Should you perform this Operation in a
where I may have access to fields, and sweet air, town, you should take a house which is not at
provided against the moment I arrive. I am all overlooked by any one, seeing that in this
inclined to think one may be better concealed in present day curiosity is so strong that you ought
14 E LE US I S
the outermost skirt of the suburbs, than in the to be upon your guard; and there ought to be
country or within the town. A house quite a garden (adjoining the house) wherein you
detached in the country I should have no can take exercise.”
objections to, provided you judge I shall not be
liable to discovery in it. The place called “Consider then the safety of your person,
Bermuda I am utterly against. Dear Tom, do commencing this operation in a place of safety
this matter cleanly and cleverly, without waiting whence neither enemies nor any disgrace can
for further advice. . . . To the person from drive you out before the end.”
whom you hire it (whom alone I would have you
speak to of it) it will not be strange at this time
of the year to be desirous for your own
convenience, or health, to have a place in a free
and open air!‟
“This mysterious letter was written in “the season of Easter. . . . Then first on the
April. From April till September Berkeley following day . . . I commenced this Holy
again disappears. There is in all this a curious Operation . . . the period of the Six Moons
secretiveness of which one has repeated examples being expired, the Lord granted unto me His
in his life.1 Whether he went to Dublin on that grace . . .”
occasion, or why he wanted to go, does not
appear.
[2] “I abhor business, and especially to have to “a solitary life, which is the source of all good
do with great persons and great affairs.” . . . once thou shalt have obtained the sacred
science and magic the love for retirement will
[3] “Suddenly, and without the least previous come to thee of its own accord, and thou wilt
notice of pain, he was removed to the enjoy- voluntarily shun the commerce and
ment of eternal rewards, and although all conversation of men, &c.”
possible means were instantly used, no symptom
of life ever appeared after; nor could the “a good death in His holy Kingdom.”
physicians assign any cause for his death.”

It is surely beyond doubt that Berkeley contemplated some operation of a similar character to
that of Abramelin. Note the extreme anxiety which he displays. What lesser matter could have so
stirred the placid and angelic soul of Berkeley? On what less urgent grounds would he have
agreed to the deceptions (harmless enough though they are) that he urges upon his brother?
That he at one time or another achieved success is certain from the universal report of his
holiness and from the nature of his writings. The repeated phrase in the Optics, “God is the
Father of Lights,”2 suggests an actual phrase perhaps used as an exclamation at the moment of a
Vision to express, however feebly, its nature, rather than the phrase of a reasoner exercising his
reason.
This mysterious letter which so puzzles his biographer is in fact the key to his whole character, life,
and opinions.
This is no place to labour the point ; I have at hand none of the necessary documents ; but it
might be worth the research of a scholar to trace Berkeley‟s progress through the grades of the
Great Order.—A.C.
1 2
The italics are ours.—ED. It occurs in James i. 17.