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as if the  prophesying spirit were giving its whole attention thereto, he must await the impulse to trace the
marks on the sand; and, as soon as it comes let it race to the finish. Here arises another technical difficulty. One
has to make 16 rows of dots; and, especially for the beginner, the mind has to grapple with the apprehension
lest the hand fail to execute the required number. It is also troubled by fearing to exceed; but excess does not
matter. Extra lines are simply null and void, so that the best plan is to banish that thought, and make sure only
of not stopping too soon.
Practice soon teaches one to count subconsciously ... yes, and that is the other difficulty again!
The lines being traced, the operation is over as far as spiritual qualities are required, for a time. The process of
setting up the figure for judgment is purely mechanical.
But, in the judgment, the diviner stands once more in need of his inmost and utmost attainments. He should
exhaust the intellectual sources of information at his disposal, and form from them his judgment. But having
done this, he should detach his mind from what it has just formulated, and proceed to concentrate it on the
figure as a whole, almost as if it were the object of his meditation. One need hardly repeat that in both these
operations detachment from one s personal partialities is as necessary as it was in the first part of the work. In
setting up the figure, bias would beget a Freudian phantasm to replace the image of truth which the figure
ought to be; and it is not too much to say that the entire subconscious machinery of the body and mind lends
itself with horrid willingness to this ape-like antic of treason. But now that the figure stands for judgment, the
same bias would tend to form its phantasm of wish-fulfilment in a different manner. It would act through the
mind to bewray sound judgment. It might, for example, induce one to emphasize the Venereal element in
Puella at the expense of the Saturnian. It might lead one to underrate the influence of a hostile figure, or to
neglect altogether some element of importance. The MASTER THERION has known cases where the
diver was so afraid of an unfavourable answer that he made actual mistakes in the simple mechanical construction
of the figure! Finally, in the summing up; it is fatally easy to slur over unpleasantness, and to breathe on the
tiniest spark that promises to kindle the tinder  the rotten rags!  of hope.
The concluding operation is therefore to obtain a judgment of the figure, independent of all intellectual or
moral restraint. One must endeavour to apprehend it as a thing absolute in itself. One must treat it, in short,
very much the same as one did the question; as a mystical entity, till now unrelated with other phenomena.
One must, so to speak, adore it as a god, uncritically:  Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. It must be
allowed to impose its intrinsic individuality on the mind, to put its fingers independently on whatever notes
it pleases.
In this way one obtains an impression of the true purport of the answer; and one obtains it armed with a
sanction superior to any sensible suggestions. It comes from and to a part of the individual which is independent
of the influence of environment; is adjusted to that environment by true necessity, and not by the artifices of
such adaptations as our purblind conception of convenience induces us to fabricate.
The student will observe from the above that divination is in one sense an art entirely separate from that of
Magick; yet it interpenetrates Magick at every point. The fundamental laws of both are identical. The right
use of divination has already been explained; but it must be added that proficiency therein, tremendous as is its
importance in furnishing the Magician with the information necessary to his strategical and tactical plans, in no
wise enables him to accomplish the impossible. It is not within the scope of divination to predict the future
(for example) with the certainty of an astronomer in calculating the return of a comet.
The astronomer himself has to enter a caveat. He can only calculate the probability on the observed facts. Some force
might interfere with the anticipated movement.
There is always much virtue in divination; for (Shakespeare assures us!) there is  much virtue in IF !
In estimating the ultimate value of a divinatory judgment, one must allow for more than the numerous
sources of error inherent in the process itself. The judgment can do no more than the facts presented to it
warrant. It is naturally impossible in most cases to make sure that some important factor has not been omitted.
In asking,  shall I be wise to marry? one leaves it open for wisdom to be defined in divers ways. One can only
expect an answer in the sense of the question. The connotation of  wise would then imply the limitations
 in your private definition of wisdom ,  in reference to your present circumstances. It would not involve
guarantee against subsequent disaster, or pronounce a philosophical dictum as to wisdom in the abstract sense.
One must not assume that the oracle is omniscient. By the nature of the case, on the contrary, it is the
utterance of a being whose powers are partial and limited, though not to such an extent, or in the same
directions, as one s own. But a man who is advised to purchase a certain stock should not complain if a general
panic knocks the bottom out of it a few weeks later. The advice only referred to the prospects of the stock in
itself. The divination must not be blamed any more than one would blame a man for buying a house at Ypres
there years before the World-War.
As against this, one must insist that it is obviously to the advantage of the diviner to obtain this information
from beings of the most exalted essence available. An old witch who has a familiar spirit of merely local
celebrity such as the toad in her tree, can hardly expect him to tell her much more of private matters than her
parish magazine does of public. It depends entirely on the Magician how he is served. The greater the man,
the greater must be his teacher. It follows that the highest forms of communicating daemons, those who
know, so to speak, the court secrets, disdain to concern themselves with matters which they regard as beneath
them. One must not make the mistake of calling in a famous physician to one s sick Pekinese. One must also
beware of asking even the cleverest angel a question outside his ambit. A heart specialist should not prescribe
for throat trouble.
The Magician ought therefore to make himself master of several methods of divination; using one or the other [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]