Liber
XLI
Thien Tao
Aleister Crowley (class
C)
A POLITICAL ESSAY
OR,
THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time---
To make the punishment fit the crime---
The punishment fit the crime!W.S. GILBERT |
|
("The Decay Of
Manners.") |
SINCE
nobody can have the presumption to doubt the demonstration of St. Thomas Aquinas that this
world is the best of all possible worlds, it follows that the imperfect condition of
things which I am about to describe can only obtain in some other universe; probably the
whole affair is but the figment of my diseased imagination. Yet if this be so, how can we
reconcile the disease with perfection?
Clearly there is something wrong here; the apparent syllogism
turns out on examination to be an enthymeme with a suppressed and impossible Major. There
is no progression on these lines, and what I foolishly mistook for a nice easy way to
glide into my story proves but the blindest of blind alleys.
We must begin therefore by the simple and austere process of
beginning.
The conditions of Japan was at this time (what time? Here we are
in trouble with the historian at once. But let me say that I will have no interference
with my story on the part of all these dull sensible people. I am going straight on, and
if the reviews are unfavourable, one has always the resource of suicide) dangerously
unstable. The warrior aristocracy of the Upper House had been so diluted with successful
cheesemongers that adulteration had become a virtue as highly profitable as adultery. In
the Lower House brains were still esteemed, but they had been interpreted as the knack of
passing examinations.
The recent extension of the franchise to women had rendered the
Yoshiwara the most formidable of the political organizations, while the physique of the
nation had been seriously impaired by the results of a law which, by assuring them in case
of injury or illness of a life-long competence of idleness which they could never have
obtained otherwise by the most laborious toil, encouraged all workers to be utterly
careless of their health. The training of servants indeed at this time consisted solely of
careful practical instruction in the art of falling down stairs; and the richest man in
the country was an ex-butler who, by breaking his leg on no less than thirty-eight
occasions, had acquired a pension which put that of a field-marshal altogether into the
shade.
As yet, however, the country was not yet irretrievably doomed. A
system of intrigue and blackmail, elaborated by the governing classes to the highest
degree of efficiency, acted as a powerful counterpoise. In theory all were equal; in
practice the permanent officials, the real rulers of the country, were a distinguished and
trustworthy body of men. Their interest was to govern well, for any civil or foreign
disturbance would undoubtedly have fanned the sparks of discontent into the roaring flame
of revolution.
And discontent there was. The unsuccessful cheesemongers were
very bitter against the Upper House; and those who had failed in examinations wrote
appalling diabetes against the folly of the educational system.
The trouble was that they were right; the government was well
enough in fact, but in theory had hardly a leg to stand on. In view of the growing
clamour, the official classes were perturbed; for many of their number were intelligent
enough to see that a thoroughly irrational system, however well it may work in practice,
cannot for ever be maintained against the attacks of those who, though they may be
secretly stigmatized as doctrinaires, can bring forward unanswerable arguments. The people
had power, but not reason; so were amenable to the fallacies which they mistook for reason
and not to the power which they would have imagined to be tyranny. An intelligent plebs is
docile; and educated canaille expects everything to be logical. The shallow
sophisms of the socialist were intelligible; they could not be refuted by the profounder
and therefore unintelligible propositions of the Tory.
The mob could understand the superficial resemblance of babies;
they could not be got to understand that the circumstances of education and environment
made but a small portion of the equipment of a conscious being. The brutal and truthful
"You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" had been forgotten for the
smooth and plausible fallacies of such writers as Ki Ra Di.
So serious had the situation become, indeed, that the governing
classes had abandoned all dogmas of Divine Right and the like as untenable. The theory of
heredity had broken down, and the ennoblement of the cheesemongers made it not only false,
but ridiculous.
We consequently find them engaged in the fatuous task of
defending the anomalies which disgusted the nation by a campaign of glaring and venal
sophistries. These deceived nobody, and only inspired the contempt, which might have been
harmless, with a hate which threatened to engulph the community in an abyss of the most
formidable convulsions.
Such was the razor-edge upon which the unsteady feet of the
republic strode when, a few years before the date of my visit, the philosopher Kwaw landed
at Nagasaki after an exhilarating swim from the mainland.
II
|
("Standing
Alone.") |
KWAW,
when he crossed the Yellow Sea, was of the full age of thirty-two years. The twenty
previous equinoxes had passed over his head as he wandered, sole human tenant, among the
colossal yet ignoble ruins of Wei Hai Wei. His only companions were the lion and the
lizard, who frequented the crumbling remains of the officers' quarters; while in the
little cemetery the hoofs of the wild ass beat (uselessly, if he wished to wake them) upon
the tombs of the sportsmen that once thronged those desolate halls.
During this time Kwaw devoted his entire attention to the pursuit
of philosophy; for the vast quantities of excellent stores abandoned by the British army
left him no anxiety upon the score of hunger.
In the first year he disciplined and conquered his body and its
emotions.
In the next six years he disciplined and conquered his mind and
its thoughts.
In the next two years he had reduced the Universe to the Yang and
the Yin and their permutations in the trigrams of Fo-hi and the hexagrams of King Wu.
In the last year he abolished the Yang and the Yin, and became
united with the great Tao.
All this was very satisfactory to Kwaw. But even his iron frame
had become somewhat impaired by the unvarying diet of tinned provisions; and it was
perhaps only by virtue of the talisman
N A H A R I A M A
A Q
H
E
A Q
R
I
A
Q
M
Q A
A |
that he
succeeded in his famous attempt to outdo the feats of Captain Webb. Nor was his reception
less than a triumph. So athletic a nation as the Japanese still were could not but honour
so superb an achievement, though it cost them dear, inasmuch as the Navy League (by an
astute series of political moves) compelled the party in power to treble the Navy, build a
continuous line of forts around the sea-coast, and expend many billions of yen upon the
scientific breeding of a more voracious species of shark than had hitherto infested their
shores.
So they carried Kwaw shoulder-high to the Yoshiwara, and passed
him the glad hand, and called out the Indians, and annexed his personal property for
relics, and otherwise followed the customs of the best New York Society, while the German
Band accompanied the famous Ka Ru So to the following delightful ballad:
CHORUS.
Blow the tom-tom, bang the flute!
Let
us all be merry!
I'm
a party with acute
Chronic
beri-beri.
I.
Monday
I'm a skinny critter
Quite
Felicien-Rops-y.
Blow
the cymbal, bang the zither!
Tuesday
I have dropsy.
Chorus.
II.
Wednesday
cardiac symptoms come;
Thursday
diabetic,
Blow
the fiddle, strum the drum!
Friday
I'm paretic.
Chorus.
III.
If
on Saturday my foes
Join
in legions serried,
Then,
on Sunday, I suppose
I'll
be beri-beried!
Chorus.
One need not be intimately familiar with the Japanese character
to understand that Kwaw and his feat were forgotten in a very few days; but a wealthy
Daimio, with a taste for observation, took it into his head to inquire of Kwaw for what
purpose he had entered the country in so strange a manner. It will simplify matters if I
reproduce in extenso the correspondence, which was carried on by telegram.
(1) Who is your
honourable self, and why has your excellency paid us cattle the distinguished compliment
of a visit?
(2) This disgusting worm is great Tao. I humbly beg of your sublime radiance to trample
his slave.
(3) Regret great toe unintelligible.
(4) Great Tao --- T.A.O. --- Tao.
(5) What is the great Tao?
(6) The result of subtracting the universe from itself.
(7) Good, but this decaying dog cannot grant your honourable excellency's sublime desire,
but, on the contrary, would earnestly pray your brilliant serenity to spit upon his
grovelling "joro."
(8) Profound thought assures your beetle-headed suppliant that your glorious nobility must
meet him before the controversy can be decided.
(9) True. Would your sublimity condescend to defile himself by entering this
muck-sweeper's miserable hovel?
(10) Expect leprous dragon with beri beri at your high mightiness's magnificent heavenly
palace to-morrow (Thursday) afternoon at three sharp. |
Thus met Kwaw, the poet-philosopher of China; and Juju, the
godfather of his country.
Sublime moment in eternity! To the names of Joshua and Hezekiah
add that of Kwaw! For though he was a quarter of an hour late for the appointment, the
hands went back on the dial of Juju's chronometer, so that no shadow of distrust or
annoyance clouded the rapture of that supreme event.
III.
|
("The
Manefesting Of Simplicity.") |
"WHAT,"
said Juju, "O great Tao, do you recommend as a remedy for the ills of my unhappy
country?"
The sage replied as follows: "O mighty and magniloquent
Daimio, your aristocracy is not an aristocracy because it is not an aristocracy. In vain
you seek to alter this circumstance by paying the noxious vermin of the Dai Li Pai Pur to
write fatuous falsehoods maintaining that your aristocracy is an aristocracy because it is
an aristocracy.
"As Heracleitus overcame the antinomy of Xenophanes and
Parmenides, Melissus and the Eleatic Zero, and Ens and the Non-Ens by his Becoming, so let
me say to you; the aristocracy will be an aristocracy by becoming an aristocracy.
"Ki Ra Di and his dirty-faced friends wish to level down the
good practice to the bad theory; you should oppose them be levelling up the bad theory to
the good practice.
"Your enviers boast that you are no better than they; prove
to them that they are as good as you. They speak of a nobility of fools and knaves; show
to them wise and honest men, and the socialistic ginger is no longer hot in the
individualistic mouth."
Juju grunted assent. He had gone almost to sleep, but Kwaw,
absorbed in his subject, never noticed the fact. He went on with the alacrity of a
steam-roller, and the direct and purposeful vigour of a hypnotized butterfly. "Man is
perfect by his identity with the great Tao. Subsidiary to this he must have balanced
perfectly the Yang and the Yin. Easier still is it to rule the sixfold star of Intellect;
while for the base the control of the body and its emotions is the earliest step.
"Equilibrium is the great law, and perfect equilibrium is
crowned by identity with the great Tao."
He emphasized this sublime assertion by a deliberate blow upon
the protruding abdomen of the worthy Juju.
"Pray continue your honourable discourse!" exclaimed
the half-awakened Daimio.
Kwaw went on, and I think it only fair to say that he went on for
a long time, and that because you have been fool enough to read thus far, you have no
excuse for being fool enough to read farther.
"Phenacetin is a useful drug in fever, but woe to that
patient who shall imbibe it in collapse. Because calomel is a dangerous remedy in
appendicitis, we do not condemn its use in simple indigestions.
"As above so beneath! said Hermes the thrice greatest. The
laws of the physical world are precisely paralleled by those of the moral and intellectual
sphere. To the prostitute I prescribe a course of training by which she shall comprehend
the holiness of sex. Chastity forms part of that training, and I should hope to see her
one day a happy wife and mother. To the prude equally I prescribe a course of training by
which she shall comprehend the holiness of sex. Unchastity forms part of that training,
and I should hope to see her one day a happy wife and mother.
"To the bigot I commend a course of Thomas Henry Huxley; to
the infidel a practical study of ceremonial magic. Then, when the bigot has knowledge and
the infidel faith, each may follow without prejudice his natural inclination; for he will
no longer plunge into his former excesses.
"So also she who was a prostitute from native passion may
indulge with safety in the pleasure of love; she who was by nature cold may enjoy a
virginity in no wise marred by her disciplinary course of unchastity. But the one will
understand and love the other.
"I have been taxed with assaulting what is commonly known as
virtue. True; I hate it, but only in the same degree that I hate what is commonly known as
vice.
"So it must be acknowledged that one who is but slightly
unbalanced needs a milder correction than whoso is obsessed by prejudice. There are men
who make a fetish of cleanliness; they shall work in a fitter's shop, and learn that dirt
is the mark of honourable toil. There are those whose lives are rendered wretched by the
fear of infection; they see bacteria of the deadliest sort in all things but the actual
solutions of carbolic acid and mercuric chloride with which they hysterically combat their
invisible foemen; such would I send to live in the bazaar at Delhi, where they shall haply
learn that dirt makes little difference after all.
"There are slow men who need a few months' experience of the
hustle of the stockyards; there are business men in a hurry, and they shall travel in
Central Asia to acquire the art of repose.
"So much for the equilibrium, and for two months in every
year each member of your governing classes shall undergo this training under skilled
advice.
"But what of the Great Tao? For one month in every year each
of these men shall seek desperately for the Stone of the Philosophers. By solitude and
fasting for the social and luxurious, by drunkenness and debauch for the austere, by
scourging for those afraid of physical pain, by repose for the restless, and toil for the
idle, by bull-fights for the humanitarian, and the care of little children for the
callous, by rituals for the rational, and by philosophy for the credulous, shall these
men, while yet unbalanced, seek to attain to unity with the great Tao. But for those whose
intellect is purified and co-ordinated, for those whose bodies are in health, and whose
passions are at once eager and controlled, it shall be lawful to choose their own way to
the One Goal; videlicet, identity with that great Tao which is above the
antithesis of Yang and Yin."
Even Kwaw felt tired, and applied himself to saké-and-soda.
Refreshed, he continued: "The men who are willing by this means to become the
saviours of their country shall be called the Synagogue of Satan, so as to keep themselves
from the friendship of the fools who mistake names for things. There shall be masters of
the Synagogue, but they shall never seek to dominate. They shall most carefully abstain
from inducing any man to seek the Tao by any other way than that of equilibrium. They
shall develop individual genius without considering whether in their opinion its fruition
will tend to the good or evil of their country or of the world; for who are they to
interfere with a soul whose balance has been crowned by the most holy Tao?
"The masters shall be great men among men; but among great
men they shall be friends.
"Since equilibrium will have become perfect, a greater than
Napoleon shall arise, and the peaceful shall rejoice thereat; a greater than Darwin, and
the minister in his pulpit give open thanks to God.
"The instructed infidel shall no longer sneer at the
church-goer, for he will have been compelled to go to church until he saw the good points
as well as the bad; and the instructed devotee will no longer detest the blasphemer,
because he will have laughed with Ingersoll and Saladin.
"Give the lion the heart of the lamb, and the lamb the force
of the lion; and they will lie down in peace together."
Kwaw ceased, and the heavy and regular breathing of Juju assured
him that his words had not been wasted; at last that restless and harried soul had found
supreme repose.
Kwaw tapped the gong. "I have achieved my task," said
he to the obsequious major-domo, "I pray leave to retire from the Presence."
"I beg your excellency to follow me," replied the gorgeous functionary,
"his lordship has commanded me to see that your holiness is supplied with everything
that you desire." Then the sage laughed aloud.
IV
|
("Things To
Be Believed.") |
SIX months
passed by, and Juju, stirring in his sleep, remembered the duties of politeness, and asked
for Kwaw.
"He is on your lordship's estate at Nikko," the
servants hastened to reply, "and he has turned the whole place completely upside
down. Millions of yen have been expended monthly; he has even mortgaged this very palace
in which your lordship has been asleep; a body of madmen has seized the reins of
government -----"
"The Synagogue of Satan!" gasped the outraged Daimio.
" --- And you are everywhere hailed as the Godfather of your
country!"
"Do not tell me that the British war has ended disastrously
for us!" and he called for the elaborate apparatus of hari-kari.
"On the contrary, my lord, the ridiculous Sa Mon, who would
never go to sea because he was afraid of being sick, although his genius for naval
strategy had no equal in the Seven Abysses of Water, after a month as stowaway on a
fishing boat (by the order of Kwaw) assumed the rank of Admiral of the Fleet, and has
inflicted a series of complete and crushing defeats upon the British Admirals, who though
they had been on the water all their lives, had incomprehensibly omitted to acquire any
truly accurate knowledge of the metaphysical systems of Sho Pi Naour and Ni Tchze.
"Again, Hu Li, the financial genius, who had hitherto been
practically useless to his country on account of that ugliness and deformity which led him
to shun the society of his fellows, was compelled by Kwaw to exhibit himself as a freak. A
fortnight of this cured him of shyness; and within three months he has nearly doubled the
revenue and halved the taxes. Your lordship has spent millions of yen; but is to-day a
richer man than when your excellency went to sleep."
"I will go and see this Kwaw," said the Daimio. The
servants then admitted that the Mikado in person had been waiting at the palace door for
over three months, for the very purpose of begging permission to conduct him thither, but
that he had been unwilling to disturb the sleep of the Godfather of his country.
Impossible to describe the affecting scene when these two
magnanimous beings melted away (as it were) in each other's arms.
Arrived at the estate of Juju at Nikko, what wonder did these
worthies express to see the simple means by which Kwaw had worked his miracles! In a glade
of brilliant cherry and hibiscus (and any other beautiful trees you can think of) stood a
plain building of stone, which after all had not cost millions of yen, but a very few
thousands only. Its height was equal to its breadth, and its length was equal to the sum
of these, while the sum of these three meas urements was precisely equal to ten times the
age of Kwaw in units of the span of his hand. The walls were tremendously thick and there
was only one door and two windows, all in the eye of the sunset. One cannot describe the
inside of the building, because to do so would spoil all the fun for other people. It must
be seen to be understood, in any case; and there it stands to this day, open to anybody
who is strong enough to force in the door.
But when they asked for Kwaw, he was not to be found. He had left
trained men to carry out the discipline and the initiations, these last being the chief
purpose of the building, saying that he was homesick for the lions and lizards of
Wei-Hai-Wei, and that anyway he hadn't enjoyed a decent swim for far too long.
There is unfortunately little room for doubt that the new and
voracious species of sharks (which Japanese patriotism had spent such enormous sums in
breeding) is responsible for the fact that he has never again been heard of.
The Mikado wept; but, brightening up, exclaimed: "Kwaw found
us a confused and angry mob; he left us a diverse, yet harmonious, republic; while let us
never forget that not only have we developed men of genius in every branch of practical
life, but many among us have had our equilibrium crowned by that supreme glory of
humanity, realization of our identity with the great and holy Tao."
Wherewith he set aside no less than three hundred and sixty-five
days in every year, and one extra day every fourth year, as days of special rejoicing.
|