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itself a source of pleasure or of pain. Can it be that we resent the idea of our previous condition of servitude ?
We want to forget the past, however good reason we may have to be proud of it. It is well known that many
men are embarrassed in the presence of a monkey.
When the loss of face does not occur, distrust the accuracy of the item which you recall, The only reliable
recollections which present themselves with serenity are invariably connected with what men call disasters.
Instead of the feeling of being caught in the slips, one has that of being missed at the wicket. One has the sly
satisfaction of having done an outrageously foolish thing and got off scot free. When one sees life in perspective,
it is an immense relief to discover that things like bankruptcy, wedlock, and the gallows made no particular
difference. They were only accidents such as might happen to anybody; they had no real bearing on the point
at issue. One consequently remembers having one s ears cropped as a lucky escape, while the causal jest of a
drunken skeinsmate in an all-night cafe stings one with the shame of the parvenu to whom a polite stranger has
unsuspectingly mentioned Mine Uncle .
The testimony of intuitions is, however, strictly subjective, and shrieks for collateral security. It would be a
great error to ask too much. In consequence of the peculiar character of the recollections which are under the
microscope, anything in the shape of gross confirmation almost presumes perjury. A pathologist would arouse
suspicion if he said that his bacilli had arranged themselves on the slide so as to spell Staphylococcus. We
distrust an arrangement of flowers which tells us that Life is worth living in Detroit, Michigan . Suppose that
Aleister Crowley remembers that he was Sir Edward Kelly. It does not follow that he will be able to give us
details of Cracow in the time of James I of England. Material events are the words of an arbitrary language; the
symbols of a cipher previously agreed on. What happened to Kelly in Cracow may have meant something to
him, but there is no reason to presume that it has any meaning for his successor. There is an obvious line of
criticism about any recollection. It must not clash with ascertained facts. For example one cannot have two
lives which overlap, unless there is reason to suppose that the earlier died spiritually before his body ceased to
breathe. This might happen in certain cases, such as insanity.
It is not conclusive against a previous incarnation that the present should be inferior to the past. One s life may
represent the full possibilities of a certain partial Karma. One may have devoted one s incarnation to discharging
the liabilities of one part of one s previous character. For instance, one might devote a lifetime to settling the
bill run up by Napoleon for causing unnecessary suffering, with the object of starting afresh, clear of debt, in a
life devoted to reaping the reward of the Corsican s invaluable services to the race.
The Master Therion, in fact, remembers several incarnations of almost uncompensated wretchedness, anguish
and humiliation, voluntarily undertaken so that he might resume his work unhampered by spiritual creditors.
These are the stigmata. Memory is hall-marked by its correspondence with the facts actually observed in the
present. This correspondence may be of two kinds. It is rare (and it is unimportant for the reasons stated above)
that one s memory should be confirmed by what may be called, contemptuously, external evidence. It was
indeed a reliable contribution to psychology to remark that an evil and adulterous generation sought for a sign.
(Even so, the permanent value of the observation is to trace the genealogy of the Pharisee from Caiaphas to
the modern Christian.)
Signs mislead, from Painless Dentistry upwards. The fact that anything is intelligible proves that it is addressed
to the wrong quarter, because the very existence of language presupposes impotence to communicate directly.
When Walter Raleigh flung his cloak upon the muddy road, he merely expressed, in a cipher contrived by a
combination of circumstances, his otherwise inexpressible wish to get on good terms with Queen Elizabeth.
The significance of his action was determined by the concourse of circumstances. The reality can have no
reason for reproducing itself exclusively in that especial form. It can have no reason for remembering that so
extravagant a ritual happened to be necessary to worship. Therefore, however well a man might remember his
incarnation as Julius Caesar, there is no necessity for his representing his power to set all upon the hazard of a
die by imagining the Rubicon. Any spiritual state can be symbolized by an infinite variety of actions in an
infinite variety of circumstances. One should recollect only those events which happen to be immediately
linked with one s peculiar tendencies to imagine one thing rather than another.
The exception is when some whimsical circumstance ties a knot in the corner of one s mnemonic handkerchief.
Genuine recollections almost invariably explain oneself to oneself. Suppose, for example, that you feel an
instinctive aversion to some particular kind of wine. Try as you will, you can find no reason for your idiosyncrasy.
Suppose, then, that when you explore some previous incarnation, you remember that you died by a poison
administered in a wine of that character, your aversion is explained by the proverb, A burnt child dreads the
fire. It may be objected that in such a case your libido has created a phantasm of itself in the manner which
Freud has explained. The criticism is just, but its value is reduced if it should happen that you were not aware
of its existence until your Magical Memory attracted your attention to it. In fact, the essence of the test
consists in this: that your memory notifies you of something which is the logical conclusion of the premisses
postulated by the past.
As an example, we may cite certain memories of the Master Therion. He followed a train of thought which
led him to remember his life as a Roman named Marius de Aquila. It would be straining probability to
presume a connection between (alpha) this hieroglyphically recorded mode of self-analysis and (beta) ordinary
introspection conducted on principles intelligible to himself. He remembers directly various people and various
events connected with this incarnation; and they are in themselves to all appearance actual. There is no
particular reason why they, rather than any others, should have entered his sphere. In the act of remembering
them, they are absolute. He can find no reason for correlating them with anything in the present. But a
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