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- CHASTITY.
- Those Works of Ancient and Mediaeval Literature which more particularly
- concern the Seeker after Truth, concur on one point. The most worthless
- Grimoires of Black Magic, no less than the highest philosophical flights of
- the Brotherhood which we name no, insist upon the virtue of Chastity as
- cardinal to the Gate of Wisdom.
- Let first be noted this word Virtue, the quality of Manhood, integral
- with Virility. The Chastity of the Adept of the Rose and Cross, or of the
- Graal-Knights of Monsalvat, is not other than very opposite to that of
- which the poet can write:
- "......Chastity that slavering sates
- His lust without the walls, mews, and is gone,
- Preening himself that his lewd lips relent."
- Or to that emasculate frigor of Alfred Tennyson and the Academic Schools.
- The Chastity whose Magical Energy both protects and urges the aspirant
- to the Sacred Mysteries is quite contrary in its deepest nature to all
- vulgar ideas of it; for it is, in the first place, a positive passion; in
- the second, connected only by obscure magical links with the sexual
- function; and, in the third, the deadliest enemy of every form of bourgeois
- morality and sentiment.
- It may assist us to create in our minds a clear concept of this noblest
- and rarest -- yet most necessary -- of the Virtues, if we draw the
- distinction between it and one of its ingredients, Purity.
- Purity is a passive or at least static quality; it connotes the absence
- of all alien admixture from any given idea; as, pure gallium, pure
- mathematics, pure race. It is a secondary and derive use of the word which
- we find in such expressions as "pure milk," which imply freedom from
- contamination.
- Chastity, per contra, as the etymology («MDUL»castus,«MDNM» possibly
- connected with castrum, a fortified camp*) suggests, may be supposed to
- assert the moral attitude of readiness to resist any assault upon an
- existing state of Purity.
- "So dear to heaven is saintly chastity
- That when a soul is found sincerely so
- A thousand liveried angels lackey it,"
- sang Milton, with the true poet's veil-piercing sword-vision; for service
- is but waste unless action demands it.
- The Sphinx is not to be mastered by holding aloof; and the brutish
- innocence of Paradise is always at the mercy of the Serpent. it is his
- Wisdom that should guard our Ways; we need his swiftness, subtlety, and his
- royal prerogative of dealing death.
- The Innocence of the Adept? We are at once reminded of the strong
- Innocence of Harpocrates, and of His Energy of Silence. A chaste man is
- thus not merely one who avoids the contagion of impure thoughts and their
- results, but whose virility is competent to restore Perfection to the world
- about him. Thus the Parsifal who flees from Kundry and her attendant
- flower-witches loses his way and must wander long years in the Desert; he
- is not truly chaste until he is able to redeem her, an act which he
- performs by the reunion of the Lance and the Sangraal.
- Chastity may thus be defined as the strict observance of the Magical
- Oath; that is, in the Light of the Law of Thelema, absolute and perfected
- devotion to the Holy Guardian Angel and exclusive pursuit of the Way of the
- True Will.
- It is entirely incompatible with the cowardice of moral attitude, the
- emasculation of soul and stagnation of action, which commonly denote the
- man called chaste by the vulgar.
- "Beware of abstinence from action!" is it not written in Our lection?
- For the nature of the Universe being Creative Energy, aught else blasphemes
- the Goddess, and seeks to introduce the elements of a real death within the
- pulses of Life.
- The chaste man, the true Knight-Errant of the Stars, imposes continually
- his essential virility upon the throbbing Womb of the King's Daughter; with
- every stroke of his Spear he penetrates the heart of Holiness, and bids
- spring forth the Fountain of the Sacred Blood, splashing its scarlet dew
- throughout Space and Time. His Innocence melts with its white-hot Energy
- the felon fetters of that Restriction which is Sin, and his Integrity with
- its fury of Righteousness establishes that Justice which alone can satisfy
- the yearning lust of Womanhood whose name is Opportunity. As the function
- of the «MDUL»cas«MDNM»trum or «MDUL»cast«MDNM»ellum is not merely to resist
- a siege, but to compel to Obedience of Law and Order every pagan within
- range of its riders, so also it is the Way of Chastity to do more than
- defend its purity against assault. For he is not wholly pure who is
- imperfect; and perfect is no man in himself without his fulfillment in all
- possibility. Thus then must he be instant to seek all proper adventure and
- achieve it, seeing well to it that by no means should such distract him or
- divert his purpose, polluting his true Nature and hamstringing his true
- Will.
- Woe, woe therefore to him the unchaste who shirks scornful the
- seeming-trivial, or flees fearful the desperate, adventure. And woe, thrice
- woe, and four times woe be to him who is allured by the adventure, slacking
- his Will and demitted from his Way: for as the laggard and the dastard are
- lost, so is the toy of circumstance dragged down to nethermost Hell.
- Sir Knight, be vigilant: watch by your arms and renew your Oath; for
- that day is of sinister augury and deadly charged with danger which ye fill
- not to overflowing with gay deeds and bold of masterful, of manful
- Chastity!
- *The root «MDUL»cas«MDNM» means house; and an house is «MDUL»Beth,«MDNM»
- the letter of Mercury, the Magus of the Tarot. He is not still, in a place
- of repose, but the quintessence of all Motion. He is the Logos; and He is
- phallic. This doctrine is of the utmost Qabalistic importance.