Aleister Crowley
The Holy Guardian Angel is the spiritual Sun of the Soul of the Adept.Collection: Spiritual
You must on no account attempt to use the squares given in the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage until you have succeeded in the Operation. More, unless you mean to perform it, and are prepared to go to any length to do so, you are a fool to have the book in your possession at all. Those squares are liable to get loose and do things on their own initiative; and you won't like it.Collection: Book
The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then-probably-thrown out on the garbage heap. Well, no, it's not as bad as that; but we certainly don't want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself, if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O. is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute?Collection: Privilege
I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession.Collection: Genius
Man has the right . . . to play as he will . . . to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will.Collection: Writing
Every man and every woman is a star.Collection: Stars
I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated.Collection: Hate
Ever man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking.Collection: Men
The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.Collection: Inspirational
Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.Collection: Symphony
It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.Collection: Crush
To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.Collection: Religious
This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity.Collection: Stars
One must find out for oneself, and make sure beyond doubt, 'who' one is, 'what' one is, 'why' one is... Being thus conscious of the proper course to pursue, the next thing is to understand the conditions necessary to following it out. After that, one must eliminate from oneself every element alien or hostile to success, and develop those parts of oneself which are specially needed to control the aforesaid conditions.Collection: Doubt
The customer is usually wrong, but statistics indicate that it doesn't pay to tell him soCollection: Statistics
The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves.Collection: Names
There are no "standards of Right". Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with "moral principle"; there is no such thing.Collection: Stars
We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.Collection: Conquer
She knew that she belonged to this man, body and soul. Every trace of shame departed; it was burnt out by the fire that consumed her. She gave him a thousand opportunities; she fought to turn his words to serious things. He baffled her with his shallow smile and ready tongue, that twisted all topics to triviality. By six o'clock she was morally on her knees before him; she was imploring him to stay to dinner with her. He refused.Collection: Opportunity
What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.Collection: Heart
If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the sky!' True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.Collection: Stars
It's no good trying to teach people who need to be taught.Collection: People
It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.Collection: Men
Anything which throws light upon the Universe, anything which reveals us to ourselves, should be welcome in this world of riddles.Collection: Light
The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers - by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work - is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN?Collection: Children
People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.Collection: Pain
It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.Collection: World
When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God.Collection: Sex
It will be seen that the formula - 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please.' It is much more difficult to comply with the Law of Thelema than to follow out slavishly a set of dead regulations.Collection: Law
I believe in one secret and ineffable Lord; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name Chaos, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes. And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name Babalon.Collection: Mother
May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early!Collection: New Year
What is necessary is not to seek after some fantastic ideal, utterly unsuited to our real needs, but to discover the true nature of those needs, to fulfill them, and rejoice therein.Collection: Real
If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.Collection: Men
Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.Collection: Art
I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.Collection: Father
Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of HallucinationsCollection: Hallucinations
Invoke often! Inflame thyself with prayer!Collection: Prayer
The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science.Collection: Believe
A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim.Collection: Children
I was not content to just believe in Satan. I wanted to be his chief or staff.Collection: Believe
There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, 'Garcon! Un Pernod!'Collection: Running
The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God.Collection: Wise
Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.Collection: Men
When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one’s physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual.Collection: Country