"The Great Beast - Aleister Crowley"
by Robert Anton Wilson
_The Realist_
No. 91B - September-October 1971

XV -- The Devil
With thy right Eye create all for thyself... - _The Book of Thoth_

A word about Evil; the Beast's frequent injunctions to "explore every
possibility of the Self" and realize your True Will etc. have often been
misunderstood, especially when quoted out of context, in which case he
sounds battier than those armchair enthusiasts of mayhem and murder, Stirner
and Neitzsche and Sorel.

But the Beast was not an armchair philosopher, but rather an explorer,
mountain-climber and big-game hunter who knew violence and sudden death well
enough to call by their first names; he did not romanticize them. Her are
his actual instructions about Evil from _Liber V_, an instruction manual of
the A.A.:

"The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying
"evil." The essence of such practice will consist in training the mind and
body to confront things which cause fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like.
He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to
become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure
and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as
aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them if they
are really harmful in relation to health or comfort...

"Again, one might have a liaison with an ugly old woman until one beheld and
love the star which she is; it would be too dangerous to overcome this
distaste for dishonesty by forcing oneself to pick pockets. *Acts which are
essentially dishonorable must not be done; they should be justified only by
calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.*"

Digest carefully that last sentence. These shrewd and pragmatic counsels are
not those of a bloody-minded fool.

(Continued in Issue 91-C)