[Ed. note: Richard Kaczynski, a serious student of Crowley's unpublished work who recently completed his biography of Crowley, obtained this lecture from Christina Foyle, a member of the English bookdealing family renowned for her leterary luncheon lectures. Her family's London shop remaindered Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice. He noted in his diary for August 17, 1932 "Saw Foyle - asked to speak at lunch Sept. 15 on "The Philosophy of Magick." His hope was, as he wrote an aquaintance a few days later, "to sell a few hundred sets of my treatise Magick." Christina Foyle told Kaczynski that she arranged the luncheon at Grosvenor House even though many people warned her off because of Crowley's reputation (her usual fare was Auden, Eliot et al.). One attendee, Rode Macaulay, remarked "I don't mind what he does, as long as he doesn't turn himself into a goat." Crowley's diary for Sept. 15, the day of the luncheon, records "Made a good speech!!!!!" - HB]
I am sorry if I am not as frivolous as might be
required by the exigencies of the occasion, but Magick is a very serious subject, and I
have a very serious message to bring you. It is very little understood what Magick is. It
is connected in the minds of some people with conjuring. In the minds of others it is
connected with charlatanism. I want to tell you that Magick has been since the very
earliest ages of humanity the tradition of the wise men. I want to tell you what the
essential doctrine of the magician is with regard to man's place in the universe and that
it is given in The Book of the Law that every man and every woman is a star. What
is a star? Philosophers have always agreed about one thing - that is that the Universe to
be intelligible at all must be considered as one and homogeneous. Therefore you can
understand the position of the mystic who says that each of us is a member of the body of
God. You can understand what is written in the Bible, "your bodies are
temples of the Holy Ghost." It is upon these postulates that the general theory of
Magick is founded.
Why should this be so? We are all agreed, no doubt, that
everything that happens is in some philosophical sense a necessary happening. Let us
consider the adventures of an atom of oxygen. That atom of oxygen is not different from
any other atom of oxygen in itself. For it is identical in the same sense that we are all
of us identical. The question is - why alter that state? Why descend from the absolute to
the material? And the answer is that we will suppose the atom of oxygen is self-conscious
and becomes aware of this possibility only by entering into combination with all other
atoms. Nothing in making that combination can destroy the oxygen. The oxygen will remain
oxygen and can be extracted as oxygen, but in the process of combination it has got
experience and the magical theory of the Universe is that we have all come to the
particular star or planet we hapen to be living on in order to get experience. We all go
through stages in that experience. Some of those stages are pleasant and some rather
unpleasant, but they are all necessary in order that we may obtain the full comprehension
of ourselves.
This is the reconciliation in the magical theory between
freewill and destiny. It is true, as the determinist has told us, that our actions are all
automatic - that we are no more capable of thinking original thoughts or performing
original and willed actions than any other piece of machinery. That is the doctrine of the
materialist. And we say, "Yes, very good, but who invented this machinery?" And
the answer is, "We ourselves. Each one of us." We are in the middle of a world
crisis. It is a very good world crisis - better than any crisis we have had before and
there is no man alive with an intellect big enough to grasp the threads of the problems
which confront the world today. There are two ways out of that. Either consult a superior
intelligence which Magick shows you the way of doing, or you can develop your own mind,
for it has a faculty which is as superior to the intellect as the intellect is superior to
the emotions.
All magical operations require a very elaborate training of
one kind or another, but I think the only way out is that we have got to put men in charge
of this planet who are really more than men. We must get back to the times of the prophets
or we must make ourselves prophets. And we must look at world problems from a standpoint
which is entirely alien to that existing at present.
