Konx Om Pax by Aleister Crowley.pdf

KONX OM PAX

ESSAYS IN LIGHT

ALEISTER CROWLEY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED

LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE

WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO.

1907 E . V .

THIS ELECTRONIC EDITION

PRODUCED BY CELEPHAIS PRESS

JANUARY 2003 E . V .

CONTENTS

D EDICATION AND C OUNTER -D EDICATION . . .

iii

T HE W AKE W ORLD . . . . . . .

A LI S LOPER . . . . . . . . .

T HIEN T AO . . . . . . . . .

T HE S TONE OF A BIEGNUS . . . . . .

KONX OM PAX

DEDICATION AND COUNTER-DEDICATION

WITH A NOTE ON OBSCURITY

HEN the Neophyte enters upon the Path of Evil, there confronteth him the great

angel Samael. In vain he saith that he is come from between the pillars and

seeketh the hidden Knowledge in the Name of Adonai; the angel answers him: “I am

the Prince of Darkness and of Evil. The wicked and rebellious man gazeth upon the

face of Nature, and findeth therein naught but terror and obscurity; unto him it is but

the darkness of the darkness, and he is but as a drunken man groping in the dark.

Return! for thou canst not pass by.”

Equally, when the Neophyte enters upon the Path of Good, doth the great angel

Metatron arrest him with the words: “I am the angel of the Presence divine. The wise

man gazeth upon the material world, and he beholdeth therein the luminous image of

the Creator. Not as yet canst thou bear the dazzling brilliance of that Light. Return!

for thou canst not pass by!” These commonplaces of the bastard mysticism of

mountebacks, crude and imbecile as they seem to one who has “passed by,” are

curiously apt to mine intention of the moment.

Essays in Light! I hear somebody exclaim. The man was obscure enough before,

but now . . . !!! Very like. 'Tis the first time I have written careless of lucidity. By

the usual paradox, I may expect some solemn fool to assert that nothing ever was so

plain, and (with a little luck) the rest of the solemn fools—brief, all England—to

follow them: till Konx om Pax replace Reading without Tears in every Infant School.

Yet, suppose this were to happen, how would the world be advanced? In no wise.

For the brilliance wherein we walk will be but thick darkness to all those who have no

become so blind that light and darkness are akin. The light wherein I write is not the

light of reason; it is not the darkness of unreason; it is the L.V.X. of that which, first

mastering and then transcending the reason, illumines all the darkness caused by the

interference of the opposite waves of thought; not by destroying their balance, and

thereby showing a false and partial light, but by overleaping their limitations.

Let not the pedant exclaim with Newman that I avoid the Scylla of Ay and the

Charybdis of Nay by the Straits of No-meaning.

A thing is not necessarity A or not-A. It may be outside the universe of discourse

wherein A and not-A exist. It is absurd to say of Virtue that it is green or not-green;

for Virtue has nothing to do with colour. It is one of the most suggestive definitions

of KONX—the LVX of the Bretheren of the Rosy Cross—that is transcends all the

possible pairs of opposites. Nor does this sound nonsensical to those who are

acquainted with That LVX. But to those who do not, it must (I fear) remain as

obscure and ridiculous as spherical trigonometry to the inhabitants of Flatland.

KONX OM PAX

Kant and others have remarked on the similarity of our hands and feet, and the

impossibility of one replacing its fellow in ordinary 3-dimensional space. This to

them suggested a space in which they can be made to coincide.

Similarly, a constant equilibration of all imaginable opposites will suggest to us a

world in which they are truly one; whence to that world itself is but the shortest step.

All our contradictories are co-ordinate curves; they are on opposite sides of the axis,

but otherwise are precisely similar, just as in the case of the hands quoted above. If

they were not similar, they would no longer be contradictories, but contraries.

People who begin to think for themselves usually fall into the error of contradicting

normal ideas as taught by their seniors.

Thus, one learns that marriage is right and adultery wrong. One thinks, and finds the

beauty of the latter, the sordidity of the former; perhaps ending, with a little wit, in

defending marriage because the delights of adultery are impossible without it. This

attitude is good enough, indeed, while one is talking to the grovellers; but what

educates the clergy (since miracles still happen) is a truism to an actress.

If in the jungle two elephants fight lustily, he shall do little who champions either;

rather snare both, tame both, ride both, as the charioteer of the Tarot with the opposing

sphinxes, black and white.

Nor, O man, believe thou that finality is anywhere to be reached in words. I balance

A and not-A (a), and finding both false, both true, transcend with B. But whatever B

is, it is as false and true as b; we reach C. So from C to c, and for ever. Not, as Hegel

thought, until we reach an idea in which no seed of self-contradiction lurks; for that

can never be.

The thinkable is false, then? (once more!) Yea, but equally it is true.

So also the old mystics were right who saw in every phenomenon a dog-faced

demon apt only to seduce the soul from the sacred mystery; right, too, they who

“interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with the soul.” Yet the

latter is the higher formula; the narrowing of the Magic Circle to a point is an easier

task than the destruction of that circle (and all both within and without) by the inrush

of a higher dimension.

Alas! but either way is the Last Step; lucky are most of us if only we can formulate

some circle—any circle!

Nor avails it, O man, to transcend the reason by ignoring it. Thou must pass through

the fire to Adonai-Melekh, child of earth! Thou canst not slip by on either side. Only

when the Destruction of the Babel-Tower of Reason comes as an actual catastrophe of

thy career canst thou escape from the ruins. Otherwise, what answer hast thou (O

perfect mystic!) to whom the doctor speaks of men “self-hypnotized into cataleptic

trances,” to whom the historian denies thy Christ or Mahomet, to whom the ethicist

flings his snarls of “anti-social”; whom, indeed, all men, thyself the foremost, charge

with insanity, with ignorance, with error?

Naught but an infinite skepsis saves thee here. Do not defend thy Christ; attack the

place of thine opponent; challenge all his premisses, dispute the validity of his most

deepest axioms, impugn his sanity, doubt his existence!

On thine own formula he is but a demon dog-faces, or God.

Destroy him, or be he: that is enough; there is no more to say.

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