Are round squares triangular?
Is the sort of question we ask when faced with the unknowable. Or you might say a square cannot be round therefore it cannot be triangle, if the past cannot be knowable then neither can the future.
The true skeptic contemplating himself http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/libers/liber148.pdf The hunchback and the soldier
In these last months I have certainly been feeling the pendulum effect as described later on and I may have even found some of what he suggested at the end, if Jophiel is any indication. The following parts are funny, but the point is that one invisible thing might just as well be another.
A boot is an illusion.
A hat is an illusion.
Therefore, a boot is a hat.
All boots are illusions.
All hats are illusions.
Therefore (though it is not a syllogism), all boots and hats are illusions.
To the man in Kether no illusions matter.
Therefore: to the man in Kether neither boots nor hats matter.
In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and hats.
You, they say, claim to be a man in Kether (I don’t). Why then, do you not wear boots on your head and hats on your feet?
I can only answer that I am out of all relation as much with feet and heads as with boots and hats. But why should I (from my exalted pinnacle) stoop down and worry the headed and footed gentleman in Malkuth, who after all doesn’t exist for me, by these drastic alterations in his toilet? There is no distinction whatever; I might easily put the boots on his shoulders, with his head on one foot and his hat on the other.
In short, why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do have insane ideas about the universe?
My message is then twofold; to the greasy bourgeois I preach discontent; I shock him, I stagger him, I cut away earth from under his feet, I turn him upside down, I give him hashish and make him run amok, I twitch his buttocks with the red-hot tongs of my Sadistic fancy—until he feels uncomfortable.
But to the man who is already as uneasy as St. Lawrence on his silver grill, who feels the Spirit stir in him, even as a woman feels, and sickens at, the first leap of the babe in her womb, to him I bring the splendid vision, the perfume and the glory, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
And to whosoever hath attained that height will I put a further Question, announce an further Glory. It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am bound to deliver this elementary Message.
“Man has two sides; one to face the world with,
One to show a woman that he loves her.”
The true skeptic contemplating himself http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/libers/liber148.pdf The hunchback and the soldier
INQUIRY. Let us inquire in the first place: What is Scepticism? The word means
looking, questioning, investigating. One must pass by contemptuously the Christian
liar’s gloss which interprets “sceptic” as “mocker”; though in a sense it is true for
him, since to inquire into Christianity is assuredly to mock at it; but I am concerned
to intensify the etymological connotation in several respects. First, I do not regard
mere incredulity as necessary to the idea, though credulity is incompatible with it.
Incredulity implies a prejudice in favour of a negative conclusion; and the true sceptic
should be perfectly unbiassed.
looking, questioning, investigating. One must pass by contemptuously the Christian
liar’s gloss which interprets “sceptic” as “mocker”; though in a sense it is true for
him, since to inquire into Christianity is assuredly to mock at it; but I am concerned
to intensify the etymological connotation in several respects. First, I do not regard
mere incredulity as necessary to the idea, though credulity is incompatible with it.
Incredulity implies a prejudice in favour of a negative conclusion; and the true sceptic
should be perfectly unbiassed.
expect seven misfortunes from the cripple, and forty-two from the one-eyed man, but when the hunchback comes say Allah be Aid." -Arab Proverb.
A hat is an illusion.
Therefore, a boot is a hat.
All boots are illusions.
All hats are illusions.
Therefore (though it is not a syllogism), all boots and hats are illusions.
To the man in Kether no illusions matter.
Therefore: to the man in Kether neither boots nor hats matter.
In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and hats.
You, they say, claim to be a man in Kether (I don’t). Why then, do you not wear boots on your head and hats on your feet?
I can only answer that I am out of all relation as much with feet and heads as with boots and hats. But why should I (from my exalted pinnacle) stoop down and worry the headed and footed gentleman in Malkuth, who after all doesn’t exist for me, by these drastic alterations in his toilet? There is no distinction whatever; I might easily put the boots on his shoulders, with his head on one foot and his hat on the other.
In short, why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do have insane ideas about the universe?
one must abandon the reality of religion for a sham, so that the religion may be universal enough for those few who are capable of its reality to nestle in its breast, and nurse their nature on its starry milk. But we anticipate!
But to the man who is already as uneasy as St. Lawrence on his silver grill, who feels the Spirit stir in him, even as a woman feels, and sickens at, the first leap of the babe in her womb, to him I bring the splendid vision, the perfume and the glory, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
And to whosoever hath attained that height will I put a further Question, announce an further Glory. It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am bound to deliver this elementary Message.
“Man has two sides; one to face the world with,
One to show a woman that he loves her.”
thou shalt sit throned on the Invisible, thine eyes fixed upon That which we call Nothing, because it is beyond Everything attainable by thought, or trance, thy right hand gripping the azure rod of Light, thy left hand clasped upon the scarlet scourge of Death; thy body girdled with a snake more brilliant than the Sun, its name Eternity; thy mouth curved moonlike in a smile, in the invisible kiss of Nuit, our Lady of the Starry Abodes; the body’s electric flesh stilled by sheer might to a movement closed upon itself in the controlled fury of Her love—nay, beyond all these Images art thou (little brother!) who art passed from I and Thou, and He unto That which hath no Name, no Image. . . .
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