[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.There recently came into my hands, however, a book upon magic published for private circulation, in which thestatement is made that the ideal blood sacrifice is a male child.The charge of revolutionary activities is one that has been frequently made against the occult movement.There arecertain things, however, which must be borne in mind when assessing the truth of this charge.Firstly, the occultmovement is not a homogeneous whole.It is totally unorganised and unregulated, and may best be likened to the stateof England before the Norman Conquest.Conditions in the various groups and associations vary widely, and what istrue of one may not be true of another.There can be no doubt whatsoever that various organisations at various timeshave been implicated in politics, as witness the Theosophical Society's association with Indian political movements; butwe must bear in mind that one generation's revolutionaries are the next generation's reactionaries.After all, politics area matter of opinion, and even the people we disagree with may turn out to be right in the end.I, personally, am of theopinion that an occult fraternity is extremely ill-advised to concern itself with politics for reasons which I have stated in54 of 103 another of my books, Sane Occultism, and which I will not enter upon now, as they are not relevant to these pages.Butas folk from time immemorial have banded themselves together for political action we cannot very well take exceptionto what the law permits.People who join an organisation established for political work join it with their eyes open andpresumably for the purposes for which it was founded.Grounds for objection arise, however, when an organisation isfounded for non political pursuits and subsequently the leaders, without consulting, or even informing their supporters,take up political activities on their own account and use their organisation for the purpose, thus involving theirfollowers without their consent in whatever complications may arise, and using money contributed for a specificpurpose for ends other than the donors had in view.It may be wondered what use, at the present day, revolutionaries could make of the occult organisations.Within mypersonal knowledge they have used, or attempted to use them, for the purpose of getting letters to people whose.correspondence is being watched, and I myself once received a request to allow a person who had been deported toreturn to the country under an assumed name and reside in one of our community houses as a member, and was offeredsome hundreds of pounds for so doing.Needless to say, the correspondence was sent straight to the authorities.The problems which we have considered in this chapter are not peculiar to occult fraternities, but are common to anyorganisation which does not discriminate as to its members.The organisations which advertise must perforce take allcomers and sort them out in the light of subsequent experience, and some of these experiences can be very queerindeed.One cannot blame an organisation that picks up an occasional black sheep, one only takes exception if it retainsan accumulation of them.A lodge of dubious whiteness can be readily recognised by the type of people who belong to it, who may best bedescribed as the seedy adventurer type with a sprinkling of smart society folk who often have a taste for crude flavoursin the way of sensation.The really Black Lodges are as carefully guarded as the high-grade White Lodges, and nooutsider can gain entrance to them.The serious student of Black Occultism is out for knowledge and magicalexperiment and he is not going to waste his time on a tyro.Those who choose to graduate into a Black Lodge afterserving their apprenticeship in the Outer Court of a White Lodge do so with their eyes open, and experience must betheir teacher.One cannot feel that they deserve much sympathy if the experience is a painful one.The person I am outto help is the person who is a victim, not the one who is hoist with his own petard.The man or woman who, rejectingthe steady grade of the Way of Initiation, chooses to go up with rocket had better come down with the stick.Any request for a large sum of money should always be regarded as a danger signal
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]