Main Wall

HELL—La Nature Malade.

(This picture is too complicated to be described effectively. The general idea is to present a variety of natural objects in such form and colour as is most antipathetic to their qualities.) All we see depends on our senses: suppose they lie to us? Remember that as soon as you perceive the actual conditions of consciousness there is no such thing as Truth. Cf. Henri Poincaré, the Hon. Bertrand Russell, etc.) You have not only no guarantee that you know anything for certain, but the certainty that nothing can possibly be known for certain. Even the axioms of mathematics are no more than the most convenient factions available in our present circumstances. We can never know whether two and two make four, or even what "two" may mean; we can only agree to agree on an arbitrary interpretation of fancied phenomena, which we know to be inaccurate. What we call "God" may be only our diseased delirium-phantom, and His reality the one-eyed rotten-toothed petrifaction of Malice shewn in the picture. And so forth, on parallel principles, for the other insane abominations which blaspheme our faith in the Order and Fitness of animate and inanimate Nature.

Inscription:

"Stab your demoniac smile to my brain

 Soak me in C[ognac], C[unt], and C[ocaine]"

Below:

Four Degenerates between Christian and Jew at Prayer.

Men worship only their own weaknesses personified. "Hell" is based upon false intellectual and moral consciousness.

Wall above door:

Japanese Devil-boy Insulting Visitors.

Each soul has its own Special Means of Grace.

Double panel of door:

Faithful on the Gallows.

Death may release Love, which life has bound, and join those it has separated.

Walls of arch:

Chinese Demon (right).

The Scarlet Woman (left).

Life is a passage between the mysteries of Power and Love: these appall and revolt us insofar as we refuse to accept reality, and set up ideal standards suited to flatter our follies and anaesthetize us to out fears. Grotesque and cruel lust, obscene and shameless lasciviousness, are inherent in Nature: he who accepts the facts of the case finds that they are only the forms which his own Fear has imposed upon the realities of Life and Love.

Shelves.

(Part of north west main picture below shelves.)

Wall above window:

The Sea-Coast of Tibet; Egyptian Aztecs arriving from Norway.

You never know in how strange a world you live and what strange things may come to you.

Toad (on North-East wall) watching Sam Weller imposing Silence on Oxonian (or possibly Sir Owen Seaman); in front of these, a Dragon-Serpent begins to devour the Seven Hanged Wives in Bluebeard's Closet.

Honesty, high courage and wit, shame pompous couture, and dominate its purposeless powers. Silent Watching (with the jewel of Illumination in your head) makes you an indifferent spectator of destruction as it seizes the seven-headed dead passions (seven deadly sins). An eighth noose "to Let" awaits your own particular weakness.

Wall left of window:

Monestary on the Caucasus.

There is a City of Refuge in the Mountains for you, if you will understand the strength of Silence and Solitude. Every Tower is creative, and every Gate transmissive.

The Window:

The Long-Legged Lesbians (recess).

However desperately your perverse details run after you, you can evade them by fixing your gaze on the light, and they must be content with each other.

Shutter:

Dancing Girls (panel, inside).

When you shut out the Light of Heaven you are liable to see hideous forms which allure you.

Panels outside:

Tahitian Girl and her Eurasian Lover (lower rear).

Shamelessness always attracts those whose nature is not pure.

Temple at Sunset.

Although, when earth-light fades, the House of God becomes hard to see, it still stands upon its Rock.

A Girl in a Garden.

Nature is naked; there is no danger unless you interfere by attaching unnecessary ideas.

Four Monks Carrying a Black Goat Across the Snow to Nowhere (lower left).

Holy Power, walking in the ways of Purity, can safely dispose of the Evil Brute personally which man is compelled to carry.

Lower right of door:

(belongs to North West Wall main picture).

Middle right of door:

Chinese Dragon-Dog on Guard.

However hideous any Force may appear, it can be used to protect you.

Upper right of door:

"Satan trembles when he sees the Weakest Saint upon her Knees."

Offer your love frankly, humbly, and freely: that is True Prayer.

Wall above doorway:

Blonde Lady and Her Negro Lover.

Ease and delight are obtained by blending opposites.

The doorway:

Pregnant Swiss Artist holding young Crocodile. (arch, right)

If you have the Fruit of Love growing within you, you can handle dangerous enemies without hurting them or yourself.

Morbid Hermaphrodite from Basutoland. (arch, left)

However well you are provided with natural faculties, you will be unhappy unless you have intelligence.

Panels, inner:

Old Cathedral by the Sea in Thunderstorm. (top right)

The soul, however fantastic its faith, can dominate, and harmonize with, the most brilliantly attractive yet conventional environment.

The Great Booby Glacier. (middle right)

The summits of the soul, purity (of ice) and environment (of rock) send forth a slow irresistible river which, melting as it reaches the outer world, fertilizes the Valleys of Life.

Moonlight on the Watzee-Matterhorn. (middle left)

Illumination comes in its season to one who lives in a house on the mountain-side, in the shadow of the Holy Trinity, and is ready to embark on the Sea of Death.

Blasted Oak being Blasted Some More. (bottom left)

Nature soon destroys altogether those who have already lost the principle of Life by arousing her anger. Lightning only damages things that are not capable (in kind or in degree) of conducting it. Make yourself One with ALL Things.

Venus on the Loing Canal. (bottom left)

If you make a proper Way for your Will, and dwell in peace thereby, Love and Beauty will not fail to visit you, unveiled and at ease.

Panels, outer:

Portrait of a Wife of a British Official. (top left)

If you allow yourself to depend upon a system, you become like a sow.

The Devil our Lord. (top right)

The Sacred Symbols—the Horns of Power, the Egg of Purity, Safety and Life, etc., exist in the most terrifying appearances. Everything that is, is Holy.

Undergraduate (in LMBC scarf) Bathing. (middle left)

The first task of a young man is to "cleanse his way"; he should bear the scarlet banner, which stands for Light, Life, Love, and Liberty.

The Beast, Robed as a Major Adept, in Baltistan. (middle right)

Wisdom and Power may be applied to the most remote regions of experience.

Acrobatic Blonde on High Bar in the Coliseum of Ed Djem. (lower left)

Purity and Beauty, self-balanced, compel the attention and applause of the whole world.

The Scarlet Woman in Bokhara. (lower right)

Love is ready to travel to every part of the world, and stand supreme there.

Panels, below shutters:

Flowers. (right)

Beauty is an object in itself.

Fruit. (left)

But Beauty develops into Nourishment.

HEAVEN—The Equinox of the Gods.

This picture is a hieroglyph of the Body of Wisdom contained in many Volumes of the Holy Books of Our Order; it is therefore not possible to give a succinct account of its meaning.

The general idea is as follows: Above the earth, spinning in space among the planets and the stars, are its Two Wardens, Unchanging Wisdom and Changing Life. Between them, His head in the midst of the Sun, is AIWAZ, the Intelligence who brought to Mankind the Word of the New Aeon, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". He is shewn as "night-sky blue" because His Mother is "Infinite Space"; and He has the Scarlet Horns of His Father, the Secret Spring of all Being. Before Him run His Ministers, the Beast and the Scarlet Woman, dressed in their respective colours, the one Black & Gold, the other White & Red; and they bear the Four Magical Weapons, Wand, Cup, Sword, & Disk. They have set up a Memorial Pillar on the Earth: it is inscribed with various symbols descriptive of the Work of bringing the new Message of the Masters of Wisdom to Mankind. Especially,

A I W A Z gave W I L L

as a L A W

to M A N K I N D

through the mind of

THE BEAST 6 6 6.

Wall above door:

"Nevermore" (Raven on bust of Pallas; phantoms of Horror in background).

If the Virgin Wisdom of the All-Father be but a dead image, it becomes the perch of the Evil Wisdom of Despair.

Door, upper panel:

Chinese Landscape with Pagodas.

Nature and man are equally essential to the Manifestation of Beauty and Truth.

Door, lower panel:

"WHO ART THOU?"

You must find yourself in this picture; it is the omniform Universe whose interpretation depends on your own point of view.

Alcove, right:

The House of Pleasure.

There is a Beast of Prey on the Threshold of Pleasure, and a Giantess beckoning the passers-by; do not lose sight of these, hypnotized by the half- hidden allurements in the twilight within.

Alcove, left:

The Eternal Idol.

Man has made God in his own image; but he has made Him very badly. To him that image is none the less his God. Gross strength, brutal lust, idiot glee, crowned by material wealth, are only the Universe to those who accept it as such.

EARTH—"Love is all." Nine lovers of various species, watched by spotted dog and bowl of newly-invented fishes, in an Arabian Nights city, by a river; a volcano and other mountains in background.

All life is one. Every variety of life comes into more or less intimate contact with every variety, without regard to any theatrical ideas of "fitness". The business of every self-conscious sentient being is therefore to find Truth & Joy in every such contact; otherwise he has failed to master his environment. Whatever may come your way, meet it with "love under will"; the Union with it, however horrible or repulsive, will be Union with God, because ALL that exists is wholly God, though in a partial and imperfect Manifestation of His Essence. Thus, a Herculean dwarf (1), a dilettante in religion, elegance, and art, may be thrown into [the] society of a dragon-fly (2); it is Refinement menaced by Frivolity. But it is also the soul alighting upon the Body, to indwell its Unconscious Self. This Body is Diphues, ambivalent, containing all possibilities in itself. (Figures 1 & 2 from right.)

Gross desires (3) may be compelled to supply themselves with morose satisfaction, while their object (4) is in the power of bestial lust (5). But equally "God helps those who help themselves", and services to others nourish oneself; while Beauty delights both by actively informing unenlightened Nature, and passively awakening ecstasy in merely animal instincts. (Figures 3, 4, & 5 from right.) The perfected Ideal of Human Beauty (4) may be the prey of shameless degradation both as to the satisfaction of its active desire to creation, finding itself sterilized by the greed of society (3) and of its passive aspiration to receive the Grace of God, in whose stead the Goat of Obscenity (5) defiles it wantonly with agonizing abominations.

The instinct of maternity may be starved into substituting loathsome craving for its proper satisfaction. But also, the natural yearning after God may find true fulfillment in the mutual help of mortals to each other. (Fig. 6 & 7 from right.) And the Wisdom of the East (8) may be obligated to transmit its Truth to a gaudy and unintelligent parrot (9). Alternatively, True Philosophy seeks the Truth in the winged and many-coloured Image of its Dreams, despite their unintelligible message, rather than in any being of its own order of existence. (Fig. 8 & 5.) The Serpent (10) may find itself utterly neglected by all creation, unable to communicate the Knowledge which would "make man as Gods". On the other hand, the Wise One, Lord of Life and Death, is contented with its own divine and kingly function; he does not need to come into actual contact with the existence which he has created. (Lower right corner, apart.)

The dog's loyalty (11) may be so despised that he is banished to a lonely pedestal whence he must contemplate the crazy callousness of the world (upper left corner, apart.); and the fish (12-20) who might nourish the brains of mankind may be enclosed in a bowl for the casual sport of sight-seers. (Left centre.) YET, equally, faithful and unselfish Love finds happiness in contemplating the pleasures of others, without seeking to share them; and the Fish, sacred to Hermes and the symbol of Christ, go their way in the pure Waters of Meditation within the translucent globe of Insight-of-Truth, the pure and luminous Universe which is their proper sphere. They are set apart and uplifted as an example to mankind so soon as it ceases to seek satisfaction in animal enjoyment.

In vain does man build the towers of thought; nobody inhabits them: and an unbridged river separates him from barren and ruthless nature whose beauty only serves to add horror to its essential inanity. (Background.) On the other hand, once more, the monuments of human aspiration serve as viewpoints whence men may behold the flowing Force of Purity, beyond which lie summits higher than they themselves can build, where Firmness in Aspiration (Rock), Chastity covering Materiality (Snow), and Interior Energy bursting forth in Light and Fire (the Volcano), soar in eternal diversity toward the immanent Canopy of Heaven.