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[circa 3 December 1922]
THE ABBEY OF "DO WHAT THOU WILT".
My first week at Cefalù.
Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum,
Cefalù
SICILY
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Having just gone down from Oxford I am come, together with my wife [Betty May], to Cefalù, to the Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum or Abbey of Thelema.
The town itself is most lovely; a huddle of high lemon-coloured houses lying between the paws of a titanic rock fashioned roughly like a crouching lion. One of the inhabitants guided us, for it was dusk when we arrived, to the steep hill outside the town on which stands the Abbey. The first thing that we noticed were the words "Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the Law" painted on the main door of the white low house before us. Since this is the password of those within the Abbey, and their invariable greeting, it should be said and understood at once that it upholds not the fulfilment of what one thinks one wants, but of what one ought to think one wants; of the true will. But enough for now of the ethics of Thelema (the Greek word for will) which I hope to explain fully in a later article.
The door led into the 'Temple', a large square room out of which the other five rooms open. We noticed at once a Pompeian censer of bronze and a six-sided altar standing in the centre of a magick circle that was painted on the tiled floor. Very tired after the journey, we went to bed almost at once, to be awakened at dawn by the beating of a tom-tom and the chanting of the watchword of the Abbey. Soon we had joined the others outside on the olive-green gill, where all stretched out arms to the Sun and cried, "Hail unto Thee who art Ra in Thy rising, even unto Thee who art Ra in Thy strength: Who travellest over the Heavens in Thy bark at the uprising of the Sun. . . . . Hail unto Thee from the Abodes of Night!" I cannot easily express my feeling of exultation as I stood there inhaling the sweet morning air through which the song went up to a sun golden, shining. . . . . and I had left London hooded in thickest greasy fog! The rest of this morning like others, was spent in shopping and cooking and typing by the men—women and chiefly in writing by the two men, myself and 'The Beast'. The keen air had made me tremendously hungry for the mid-day meal of meat and fruit and sharp Sicilian wine; and as I found this repast was always eaten in silence, there was every chance to satisfy the appetite; we spent out first afternoon in a way to which I could introduce all those who think the inmates of the Abbey of Thelema 'degenerate'; for it was passed in climbing the great Rock. The Beast, being a mountaineer of note, led on the rope, and we other two pulled and wormed ourselves after him up a blind buttress of the sheer rock; up and up to where the old town with its Temple of Jupiter and its Baths of Diana lies beautifully crumbled. High tea on our ravenous return: then came the Ritual of the Pentagram. This consisted in intoning with vibrant intensity at the four cardinal points the traditionally holy names of God and his archangels. The primary object is to exclude evil influences by shutting oneself up, as it were, in a consecrated square, filled and fortified with the Divine Names. This rite was followed by the reading (which is taken in turn) of the "Gnostic Collects". These are invocations of the Higher. The principles, such as that of the moon, which was hymned in these words. "Lady of Night that turning ever about us art now visible and now invisible in Thy season, be Thou favourable to hunters and lovers, and to all men that toil upon the earth, and to all mariners upon the sea." Talk and chess and a little mandoline-strumming followed, and at about nine o'clock we all went to bed to read or sleep at choice. The next afternoon was a little wet for serious climbing, so The Beast proposed a game of Thelema. I followed him to the side of the house and found there a small stone courtyard marked out roughly like a fives court but without the walls. The game itself resembled Rugby fives, but was played with an ordinary football; and any part of the body, from head to feet, could be used to get the ball up. The result is that the game is not so skilful as fives, less fast, and one set fagged us both, so that we were glad enough when a break came through the arrival of Hermes [Howard Shumway] and Dionysus [Hansi]. These, it may perhaps be said, were not the gods of that ilk "evoked to visible appearance" but the two children, one of five and the other of six years. The Beast thought fit to take them climbing on an isolated pinnacle of rock that was near at hand, and the rest of us went along to watch. I had already been slightly astonished at their invariable barefectedness and at the independence of their goings. But as I watched them climbing I became astounded and admiring. It was not so much the technique of the thing; the dexterity with which these small naked tees fitted themselves into the smallest crannies. It was rather the intelligence which they showed. Nine children out of ten, even if they could have been persuaded to pluck to climb to climb at all, would have trusted to scrambling and Fortune to get them up. No so these. Holds for hand and feet were sought, found and tested before any step was taken. There was a deliberate coolness and self-reliance about the whole affair which gave me an insight into the value of 'Do what thou wilt' as a rule for the training of children.
The rest of the week passed in like manner. It was the sheer physical healthiness and enjoyment of it all that struck us most. It was so different to what friends with bated breath had told us to expect before we left London. And now England seems too far off even for us to shudder at the idea of ever having to return. We have found wisdom.
Love is the law, love under will.
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