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THE CHILDREN
By
In dealing with the public from an initiated viewpoint, one curious dilemma always presents very strange horns. The truth, that is the truth about the immediate aspect of some culture, is always different form the accepted values and alleged truths of the culture. This truth is then irritating, annoying, upsetting, and highly dangerous.
The dilemma then is this: should one tell the truth, invoke the hostility of the public and the possible destruction of oneself and one's hopes, or should one disguise and palliate his truth, taking the equal risk that it will be obscured to futility, or even utterly lost.
Further, in his analysis, the adept must ask id, in his desire to tell an unpleasant truth, there is an element of sado-masochism that moves towards martyrdom and massacre.
Equally, in his desire to hedge, he must enquire if there is a secret desire to propitiate, to conform, to suck the golden tit of the world, and to hell with truth. In either of these extremes there is much precedent and considerable company, none of which appears to have accomplished much either in terms of human betterment or of real self-improvement. History is a long testament to the fact that men will not tell the truth about themselves and will not listen when it is told.
Of course the ideal is a balance between the two extremes; but how to achieve that balance when we ourselves are the unbalanced products of an unbalanced culture? Through suffering, experiment, analysis, and the exercise of will we can come to a knowledge and understanding of ourselves, and of the things that have thwarted and distorted us. But we cannot so easily undo that thwarting and distorting.
Even in our attempts to attain balance and our environment, we find ourselves tempted and trapped by the hatred, the fear, and the desire for the disastrous effects of our own training. Learning most bitterly the dangers inherent in romantic idealization and projection in religion and life, we react into the strictures of scientific materialism, only to find that we have simultaneously destroyed the romantic-creative impulse that gave us spiritual life. Worse—arising from this grave like a troll's ghost we see the malignant pseudo-religions of state and science, and the arid moralities of freethinking and liberalism.
Here, then, is our impasse. The enormously dynamic forces within us will always continue to create and destroy. If they do not function under our understanding and will they will create monsters and destroy our most beloved hopes.
The recurring problem of the adept is then exactly this—to discover adequate forms in which these forces can function constructively. Above all else he must recognize the magnitude of the forces, and of the forms required to contain and direct them.
The great error of society lies in this fact, that these forces, being strong and dangerous, are therefore evil things that should be ignored or destroyed, usually to the tragic cost of innumerable persons. Being ignored, they accumulate force underground until they break out in ravening chaos, and in the futile attempts to destroy them, cruelty and terror are loosed upon the world.
It would seem obvious that the forms of the western world are inadequate to cope with the forces of the human psyche. One after another they have broken down with ever-accruing dividends of violence, deceit and human misery. Man seems unable to contain either his love or his hate—they turn monstrous and rend him.
So the adepts must turn again to the fountain of life, and its veiling magick from whence come all religion, all science, all forms and all nomena.
Not a church, a dogma, an organization, a form, a cult, magick contains within itself all these things as partialities of the whole. It is therefore that systems in which each man discovers his own individual creative godhead, and which yet embraces al men in universal brotherhood and love.
If, in this view, old cherished truths, dogmas, creeds and forms appear only as partialities, or even as malignant because of their overvaluation or distortion, that is the price that must be paid for the wider horizon needful for growth and life.
It is a fundamental of magick that every force and every act stems from love. Once this is fully understood, there is simply no room for hate, which is itself the type of love for things that are incompletely experienced. But in the view of love as self-sacrifice, abnegation, and propitiation this truth is distorted and obscured. It will be seen that sham values and overemphasized partialities have a most malignant life of their own, since they are based on fear of exposure. But it is essential that we expose ourselves to this malice if we are to attain the living truth for ourselves and our race. It is equally essential that we explore and transmute the seeds of that malice in ourselves, lest like calls to like, and we are destroyed in our own nightmare.
Being in love we create love, being in hate we create hate, and, the image of the universe being in ourselves, the love or hate we create acts equally upon us. This is the great pragmatism of magick. Being truly in love we can act determinedly, in will and joy, we can even fight at need, without fear or malice or guilt, since fighting itself is a form of love.
We, the Children, love as children, seeking the means whereby we can give our love to everyone. We are, it is true, destroyers, but only the destroyers of unlove, loneliness and fear. Beyond that we are the creators of a world of magick, or the revealers of a magical world that is always. So we say love and fear not, in love there is no fear. Also in the service of the image of love may true love come to dwell, even the love of which all known loves are as shadows to the sun.
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