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-
- Liber DCCCXXXVII
-
- {Book 837}
-
- The Law
-
- of Liberty
-
- A Tract of TO MEGA VHRION 666
-
- That is a Magus 9°=2 A...A...
-
- This Epistle first appeared in The Equinox III(1) (Detroit: Universal,
- 1919), and is an expository commentary on Liber Legis--The Book of the
- Law, from which the quotations are taken.--H.B.
-
- Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
-
-
- I
-
-
- I AM OFTEN ASKED why I begin my letters in this way. No matter whether
- I am writing to my lady or to my butcher, always I begin with these
- eleven words. Why, how else should I begin? What other greeting could
- be so glad? Look, brother, we are free! Rejoice with me, sister, there
- is no law beyond Do what thou wilt!
-
- II
-
-
- I WRITE this for those who have not read our Sacred book, The Book of
- the Law, or for those who, reading it, have somehow failed to
- understand its perfection. For there are many matters in this Book,
- and the Glad Tidings are now here, now there, scattered throughout the
- Book as the Stars are scattered through the field of Night. Rejoice
- with me, all ye people! At the very head of the Book stands the great
- charter of our godhead: ``Every man and every woman is a star.'' We
- are all free, all independent, all shining gloriously, each one a
- radiant world. Is not that good tidings?
-
- Then comes the first call of the Great Goddess Nuit, Lady of the
- Starry Heaven, who is also Matter in its deepest metaphysical sense,
- who is the infinite in whom all we live and move and have our being.
- Hear Her first summons to us men and women: ``Come forth, o children,
- under the stars, & take your fill of love! I am above you and in you.
- My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.'' Later She
- explains the mystery of sorrow: ``For I am divided for love's sake,
- for the chance of union.''
-
- ``This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as
- nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.''
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- It is shown later how this can be, how death itself is an ecstasy like
- love, but more intense, the reunion of the soul with its true self.
-
- And what are the conditions of this joy, and peace, and glory? Is ours
- the gloomy asceticism of the Christian, and the Buddhist, and the
- Hindu? Are we walking in eternal fear lest some ``sin'' should cut us
- off from ``grace''? By no means.
-
- ``Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods
- and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and
- will of love as ye will, when, where, and with whom ye will! But
- always unto me.''
-
- This is the only point to bear in mind, that every act must be a
- ritual, an act of worship, a sacrament. Live as the kings and princes,
- crowned and uncrowned, of this world, have always lived, as masters
- always live; but let it not be self-indulgence; make your self-
- indulgence your religion.
-
- When you drink and dance and take delight, you are not being
- ``immoral,'' you are not ``risking your immortal soul''; you are
- fulfilling the precepts of our holy religion--provided only that you
- remember to regard your actions in this light. Do not lower yourself
- and destroy and cheapen your pleasure by leaving out the supreme joy,
- the consciousness of the Peace that passeth understanding. Do not
- embrace mere Marian or Melusine; she is Nuit Herself, specially
- concentrated and incarnated in a human form to give you infinite love,
- to bid you taste even on earth the Elixir of Immortality. ``But
- ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me! To me!''
-
- Again She speaks: ``Love is the law, love under will.'' Keep pure your
- highest ideal; strive ever toward it without allowing aught to stop
- you or turn you aside, even as a star sweeps upon its incalculable and
- infinite course of glory, and all is Love. The Law of your being
- becomes Light, Life, Love and Liberty. All is peace, all is harmony
- and beauty, all is joy.
-
- For hear, how gracious is the Goddess; ``I give unimaginable joys on
- earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace
- unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.''
-
- Is this not better than the death-in-life of the slaves of the Slave-
- Gods, as they go oppressed by consciousness of ``sin,'' wearily
- seeking or simulating wearisome and tedious ``virtues''?
-
- With such, we who have accepted the Law of Thelema have nothing to do.
- We have heard the Voice of the Star-Goddess: ``I love you! I yearn to
- you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and
- purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the
- wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!'' And
- thus She ends:
-
- ``Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to
- me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you! I am the blue-
- lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous
- night-sky. To me! To me!'' And with these words ``The Manifestation of
- Nuit is at an end.''
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- III
-
-
- IN THE NEXT CHAPTER of our book is given the word of Hadit, who is the
- complement of Nuit. He is eternal energy, the Infinite Motion of
- Things, the central core of all being. The manifested Universe comes
- from the marriage of Nuit and Hadit; without this could no thing be.
- This eternal, this perpetual marriage-feast is then the nature of
- things themselves; and therefore everything that is, is a
- crystallization of divine ecstasy.
-
- Hadit tells us of Himiself: ``I am the flame that burns in every heart
- of man, and in the core of every star.'' He is then your own inmost
- divine self; it is you, and not another, who are lost in the constant
- rapture of the embraces of Infinite Beauty. A little further on He
- speaks of us:
-
- ``We are not for the poor and the sad: the lords of the earth are our
- kinsfolk.''
-
- ``Is a God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us. They shall
- rejoice, our chosen: who sorroweth is not of us.''
-
- ``Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force
- and fire, are of us.'' Later, concerning death, He says: ``Think not,
- o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die,
- but live. Now let it be understood: If the body of the King dissolve,
- he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever.'' When you know that, what
- is left but delight? And how are we to live meanwhile?
-
- ``It is a lie, this folly against self.'' {...} ``Be strong, o man!
- lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God
- shall deny thee
-
- for this.''
-
- Again and again, in words like these, He sees the expansion and the
- development of the soul through joy.
-
- Here is the Calendar of our Church: ``But ye, o my people, rise up &
- awake! Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty!''
- Remember that all acts of love and pleasure are rituals, must be
- rituals. ``There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.
- A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride! A feast for
- the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. A feast for
- Tahuti and the child of the Prophet--secret, o Prophet! A feast for
- the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods. A feast
- for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast
- for death! A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!
- A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!
- Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the
- dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.'' It all depends
- on your own acceptance of this new law, and you are not asked to
- believe anything, to accept a string of foolish fables beneath the
- intellectual level of a Bushman and the moral level of a drug-fiend.
- All you have to do is to be yourself, to do your will, and to rejoice.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- ``Dost thou fail? Art thou sorry? Is fear in thine heart?'' He says
- again: ``Where I am, these are not.'' There is much more of the same
- kind; enough has been quoted already to make all clear. But there is a
- further injunction. ``Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear
- more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by
- the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy;
- and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein! But
- exceed! exceed! Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine--and
- doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous!--death is the crown of
- all.''
-
- Lift yourselves up, my brothers and sisters of the earth! Put beneath
- your feet all fears, all qualms, all hesitancies! Lift yourselves up!
- Come forth, free and joyous, by night and day, to do your will; for
- ``There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.'' Lift yourselves up! Walk
- forth with us in Light and Life and Love and Liberty, taking our
- pleasure as Kings and Queens in Heaven and on Earth.
-
- The sun is arisen; the spectre of the ages has been put to flight.
- ``The word of Sin is Restriction,'' or as it has been otherwise said
- on this text: That is Sin, to hold thine holy spirit in!
-
- Go on, go on in thy might; and let no man make thee afraid.
-
- Love is the law, love under will.
-