![]() When the light of intelligence begins to dawn dimly through many fogs upon these savages, we reach a second stage. The early forms of Judaism, and that type of Christianity which we associate with the Salvation Army, Billy Sunday and the Fundamentalists of the back-blocks of America, are sufficiently simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon. Where animism holds sway, the “medicine-man” personifies this universal evil, and seeks to propitiate it by human sacrifice. Most primitive fetishistic religions may, in fact, be considered fairly faithful representatives of this philosophy. This School being debased by nature, is not so far removed from conventional religion as either the White or the Yellow. (And after all, everyone has surely the right to have his own Universe the way he wants it.) That is part of the blackness of the Ignorance which they confess to be the foundation of their Universe. I must digress to explain that the confusion of thought in this doctrine is constantly recurrent. (I am not concerned to defend the logic of this School: I merely state their doctrine.) The practical issue of all this is that every kind of action is both unavoidable and a crime. ![]() The philosophers of this School, seeking, naturally enough, to amend the evil at the root, inquire into the cause of this existence which is sorrow, and arrive immediately at the “Second Noble Truth” of the Buddha: “The Cause of Sorrow is Desire.” They follow up with the endless concatenation of causes, of which the final root is Ignorance. Huxley says, in his Evolution and Ethics, “Suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things.” It has at least asserted that no known form of existence is exempt from sorrow. Western philosophy has on occasion approached this doctrine. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.) (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. There is only one way of escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. It is quite useless to point out to them that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive is its fascination. The analysis of the philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon to the category of sorrow. And yet? Is not white the Chinese hue of mourning?) (This idea of universal lamentation is presumably responsible for the choice of black as its symbolic colour. ![]() Its primary theorem is the “First Noble Truth” of the Buddha-“Everything is Sorrow.” In the primitive classics of this School the idea of sorrow is confused with that of sin. The Black School of Magick, which must by no means be confused with the School of Black Magick or Sorcery, which latter is a perversion of the White tradition, is distinguished fundamentally from the Yellow School in that it considers the Universe not as neutral, but as definitely a curse. The terminology is unfortunate, but it wasn't I that did it. Do not confuse with the Black Lodge, or the Black Brothers. Hoping that you are now recovered from the devastating revelations in the matter of the Yellow School, I must ask you to brace yourself for disclosures even more formidable about the Black. Chapter VII: The Three Schools of Magick (2)ĭo what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
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