Mouths

If you look at the mature 

form of The Xenomorph,

it’s ALL MOUTH — even though 

we are made to understand that 

it no-longer actually 

Has to Survive 

by Eating  People.

Geiger was obsessed with

the image of a mouth,

a mouth with teeth and without eyes, such as are found 

in the nightmarish hellscapes of 

Heironymous Bosch —

You see this also 

in Red Dragon, with 

Francis Dolarhyde, 

The Tooth Fairy.

A mouth that bites, 

but cannot see,

that eats, blindly, 

but cannot speak —

In particular, he took direct

 inspiration from a triptych 

painted by Francis Bacon 

in the aftermath of 

The Imagery of World War II and The Concentration Camp System 

entitled (and he was an atheist), 

Three Figures Descending 

at The Foot of 

The Cruxifixction.  

In The Shining, to the best of My Recollection,

Jack Torrance is never shown 

or seen eating, except once 

in a bedroom mirror, when 

Wendy wakes him up with a full, 

cooked breakfast in bed —

Whereas Danny is seen eating 

a peanut-butter & jelly sandwich, 

and then later some chocolate ice-cream, and

Wendy, Darling is seen to have 

prepared him a (VERY) late Breakfast 

of Toast and Eggs (sunny side up), 

Jack is never shown 

actually eating them —

Much like Bruce Wayne, 

he forgets to eat all the time, 

and ignores food when in His Cave.

Which really does play into the whole Minotaur angle,

because in that interpretation, if The Overlook 

is His Labyrinth / Mind, with His Wife and Son 

unwittingly trapped inside of it, 

then that would certainly follow, 

seeing as how that would make 

the both of them sacrifices sent in 

by those outside to provide 

for  him some fresh food.

Wendy, Darling :

Boy — We must really be high up.

The Air feels so different.

Jack :

Mm-hm.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Dad?

Jack :

Yes?

Danny, Champion of The World :

I'm Hungry…

Jack :

Well, you should've 

eaten Your Breakfast.

Wendy, Darling :

We'll get you something

as soon as we get to The Hotel.

[ Chocolate Ice Cream. ]

Danny, Champion of The World :

Okay, Mom.

Wendy, Darling :

Wasn't it around here that

The Donner Party got snowbound?

Jack :

…No, I think that 

was farther West, 

in The Sierras.

Wendy, Darling :

Oh.

Danny, Champion of The World :

What was The Donner party?

Jack :

They were a party of settlers in covered wagon times.

They got snowbound one winter in the mountains.

They had to resort to cannibalism

in order to Stay Alive.

Danny, Champion of The World :

You mean, They 

ate each other up?

Jack :

They had to! — in 

order To Survive.

Wendy, Darling :

Jack, don't --

Danny, Champion 

of The World :

Don't worry, Mom.

I know all about 

Cannibalism. 

I saw it on TV.

Jack :

Y'See...?, It's okay —

He saw it on 

The Television.

JJACK :

Slow night, 

Mr. Torrance.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Not for long, 

I imagine.

JJACK : 

You're a Whiskey Man, 

are you not?

Danny, Champion of The World :

I was, most of the time.

JJack : 

On The House.

Danny, Champion of The World :

This was Your Brand.

Jack Daniel's.

I used to see the bottles in Our Home.

Our real home, before all this.

I smelled one once. It smelled like 

something on fire, which 

I suppose it was.

JJack : 

I'm afraid you've confused 

me with Someone Else.

It's Lloyd.

Danny, Champion of The World :

— Lloyd.

JJack :

I apologise, Mr. Torrance.

I don't know where everyone 

is, but it'll pick up.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Oh, I know where they are.

And you're right... it'll pick up.

JJack : 

If you don't mind my saying, 

Mr. Torrance, you seem... 

put upon.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Put upon?

JJack : 

Ain't that the way.

Man just living his life, 

trying to Do His Work;

He gets put upon.

Pulled into other 

people's problems.

I see it all the time, if you 

don't mind my saying.

Danny, Champion of The World :

So we lived in Florida.

JJack : 

I'm sorry?

Danny, Champion of The World :

Mom and I.

JJack : 

I'm afraid I don't know who you mean.

Danny, Champion of The World :

We never wanted to see snow again, 

so we lived in Florida.

Tiny place, but it was comfortable, 

and we were happy.

I mean, we were grieving.

We were traumatised, 

but there was happiness too.

She... She would look away.

She'd look at me, but she'd always 

look away after a second or two.

It took me a while to notice it.

But after The Overlook, she wouldn't 

look me in the eyes, not for long.

Couldn't figure it out.

But it... It was you.

She saw your eyes in me, and 

she'd have to look away.

It tortured her to have to do that.

So, I fixed it.

I fixed it for her, and it was 

the last time I ever used it.

So that she wouldn't see you anymore 

when she looked at me.

I was 20 when she died.

And back then, I saw when 

someone was gonna die.

I saw flies. Black flies.

"Death flies," I called them, circling people's faces.

And in those last weeks, she was covered...

Her whole face.

I could barely see her eyes.

And I... I tried to comfort her, but 

I could hardly look at her.

And she saw that.

She just lay there dying, with her son 

who couldn't look at her.

JJack : 

Maybe something warm to push 

away such unpleasantries.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Don't you wanna hear about it? 

She was your wife.

JJack : 

I think you've mistaken 

me for Someone Else.

I'm just A Bartender. 

Danny, Champion of The World :

Oh, yeah?

Just Lloyd The Bartender, pouring 

joy at The Overlook Hotel.

JJack : 

I'll pour whatever you 

like, Mr. Torrance.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Oh, Dad…..

This drink will cost 

an awful lot.

JJack : 

Your money is no good here.

Orders from The House.

Danny, Champion of The World :

It'll cost more than money.

It'll cost me eight years.

Eight behind me, and 

who knows how many 

in front of me.

JJack : 

Your Credit is fine, 

Mr. Torrance.

Danny, Champion of The World 

Man takes A Drink, 

The Drink takes A Drink, and then 

The Drink takes A Man.

Ain't it so, Dad?

JJack : 

Medicine.

Medicine is What It Is.

Bona fide cure-all.

Depression, stress, remorse, 

failure, wipes it all away.

The Mind is A Blackboard.

And this is The Eraser.

A Man tries.

He provides.

But he's surrounded 

by mouths.

That eat, and scream, 

and cry, and nag.

So, he asks for one thing, 

just one thing for him.

To warm him up...to take 

the sting out of those days 

of the mouths, eating, 

and eating, and eating 

everything he makes, 

everything he has.

And A Family.

A Wife, A Kid.

Those mouths eat Time.

They eat Your Days on Earth.

They just gobble them up.

It's enough to make 

A Man sick.

And this... is 

The Medicine.

So, tell me, pup —

Are you gonna take 

Your Medicine?

Danny, Champion of The World :

I'm Not.

(GLASS SHATTERS)

JJack : 

Oh. Look at that. I'm sorry.

Clumsy old me, Mr. Torrance. Forgive me.

Let's get you cleaned up.

[ In The Men’s Room ]

JJack :

Management is concerned.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Concerned?

JJack : 

It's horrible what she's done to you.

Pulled you into her mess.

A smart man?

He'd let her handle it.

Let things unfold as they're meant to.

Why should you pay her tab, Doc?

And for what?

For this little girl who 

started all this Trouble?

Danny, Champion 

of The World :

And what would 'Management' 

Have Me do about that?

JJACK :

Nothing.Easiest Thing in 

The World to Do, Son —

Just bring her inside.

And then, well —

You accept The Things 

You cannot Change.

ABRA:

Dan! She's here.

Danny, Champion of The World :

Okay.

This place is sick.

Sick like my momo was sick.

It's Cancer, only worse.

(ELECTRICITY HUMMING)

What do we do now?

Danny, Champion of The World :

We head inside. She'll find us.

The Book of Lies : 1984 as Taoist Holy Scripture

"You Don't Exist, Winston."

Richard Burton in 

a Blue Boiler Suit 

- 1984 (1984)

He doesn't exist! He's a fictional character!!

Listen to Richard Burton!

He Knows So Much About These Things

And stop calling him "O'Brien"

"Throughout his entire life,right up until the time of his, Crowley always steadfastly and consistently maintained that The Book of The Law was a genuinely revealed text, received and channeled through are receptive medium in Cairo in 1904 [ Crowley's mistress] direct from The Secret Chiefs,

Transcribed verbatim.

The Book of Lies is a lot funnier."

 - Robert Anton Wilson

At Last! - The 1948 Show (aka The Ur-Python)

Masks of the Illuminati

Sir John picked out a Crowley volume entitled, with Brazen effrontery, The Book of Lies. 
Opening it, he found the title page:

THE BOOK OF LIES 

WHICH IS ALSO FALSELY CALLED 

BREAKS 

THE WANDERINGS OR FALSIFICATIONS 

OF THE ONE THOUGHT OF 

FRATER PERDURABO 

WHICH THOUGHT IS ITSELF 

UNTRUE

Despite himself, Sir John grinned. This was a variation on the Empedoclean paradox in
logic, which consists of the question: "Empedocles, the Cretan, says that everything Cretans say is a
lie; is Empedocles telling the truth?" Of course, if Empedocles is telling the truth, then -- since his
statement "everything Cretans say is a lie" is the truth -- he must also be lying. On the other hand, if
Empedocles is lying, then everything Cretans say is not a lie, and he might be telling the truth.
Crowley's title page was even more deliberately perverse: if the book is "also falsely called Breaks,"
then (because of the "also") the original title is false, too, and it is not a book of lies at all. But, on
the other hand, since it is the "falsifications. . . of the one thought. . . which is itself untrue," it is the
negation of the untrue and, therefore, true. Or was it?

Sir John turned to the first chapter and found it consisted of a single symbol, the question
mark:

?

Well, compared with the title, that was at least brief. Sir John turned the page to the second
chapter and found equal brevity:

!

What kind of a joke was this? Sir John turned to Chapter 3, and his head spun:

Nothing is.
Nothing becomes.
Nothing is not.

The first two statements were the ultimate in nihilism; but the third sentence, carrying
nihilism one step further, brought in the Empedoclean paradox again, for it contradicted itself. If
"nothing is not," then something is. . . .

What else was in this remarkable tome? Sir John started flipping pages and abruptly found
himself facing, at Chapter 77, a photograph of Lola Levine. It was captioned "L.A.Y.L.A.H." The
photo and the caption made up the entire chapter. Lola was seen from the waist up and was
shamelessly naked, although as a concession to English morality her hair hung down to cover most
of her breasts.

Sir John, on a hunch, counted cabalistically. Lamed was 30, plus Aleph is 1, plus Yod is 10,
plus second Lamed is 30, plus second Aleph is 1 again, plus He is 5; total, 77, the number of the
chapter. And Laylah was not just a loose transliteration of Lola; it was the Arabic word for "night."
And 77 was the value of the curious Hebrew word which meant either "courage" or "goat": Oz. The
simple photo and caption were saying, to the skilled Cabalist, that Lola was the priestess incarnating
the Night of Pan, the dissolution of the ego into void. . .

Sir John decided to buy The Book of Lies; it would be interesting, and perhaps profitable, to
gain further insight into the mind of the Enemy, however paradoxical and perverse might be its
expressions. He approached the counter, and found with discomfort that the clerk seated there was
Lola Levine herself. Since he had just been looking at a photo of her, naked from the waist up, he
blushed and stammered as he said, "I'd like to buy this."

"One pound six, sir," Lola said, with no more flicker of expression than any other clerk. Sir
John realized that it had been nearly three years since the one occasion on which they had met on the
Earth-plane; she had no reason to remember him. Then, was it possible that all the astral visions in
which she tormented and attempted to seduce him were the product of his own impure imagination?
Or were those visions as real as they seemed, and was she merely a consummate actress and
hypocrite? It was the metaphysical equivalent of the Empedoclean paradox.

A stout, elderly woman with a Cornish accent asked Lola, "I'm planning to stay for the
lecture. Is it pronounced Crouly or Crowley?"

"It is pronounced Crowly," said a voice from the door. "To remind you that I'm holy. But my
enemies say Crouly, in wish to treat me foully."

Sir John turned and saw Aleister Crowley, bowing politely to the Cornish woman as he
completed his jingle. Crowley was a man of medium height, dressed in a conservative pinstripe suit
jarringly offset by a gaudy blue scarf in place of the tie and with a green Borsalino hat worn at a
rakish angle. It was the outfit an artist on the Left Bank might wear, to show that he had become
successful; it was definitely eccentric for London.

The Cornish woman stared. "Are you really the Great Magician, as people say?"

"No," said Crowley at once. "I am the most dedicated enemy of the Great Magician." And he
swept past imperiously.

The Cornish lady gasped. "What did he mean by that?" she asked nobody in particular.

Sir John understood, but wasted no time trying to explain. Crowley was heading for the
lecture room and Sir John followed him closely, wanting a seat up front where he could observe the
Master of the M.M.M. most closely. The paradox had been typical of Crowley's style: he referred,
obviously, to the Gnostic teaching that the sensory universe was a delusion, created by the Devil, to
prevent humanity from seeing the Undivided Light of Divinity itself. A strange joke to come from a
Satanist; but, of course, some Gnostics had taught that Jehovah, creator of the material universe, was
the Devil, the Great Magician. The Bible begins with Beth, according to this teaching, because Beth
is the letter of the Magician in the Tarot, the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations. . .

The lecture room was filling rapidly and Sir John scampered into a front-row seat. He
noticed that Crowley had lowered his head and closed his eyes, obviously preparing himself for the
lecture by some method of invocation or meditation. Behind him on the wall was a large silver star
with an eye in its center, a symbol associated (Sir John knew) with both the goddess Isis and the
Dog Star, Sirius.

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," Crowley intoned suddenly, without
raising his head. Then he looked about the room whimsically.

"It is traditional in the great Order which I humbly represent," he went on, "to begin all
ceremonies and lectures with that phrase. Like Shakespeare's Ducdame, it is a great banishing ritual
against fools, most of whom leave the room at once on hearing it uttered. Observing no stampede to
the doors I can only wonder if a miracle is occurring tonight and I am speaking, for once, to an
English audience that does not consist mostly of fools."

Sir John smiled in spite of himself.

"My topic tonight," Crowley went on, "is the soldier and the hunchback. Those are poetic
terms I regularly employ to designate the two most interesting punctuation marks in general use
throughout Europe -- the exclamation point and the question mark. Please do not look for
profundities at this point. I call the exclamation point 'the soldier' only out of poetic whimsy,
because it stands there, erect, like a soldier on guard duty. The question mark I call the 'hunchback,'
similarly, only because of its shape. I repeat again: there is no profundity intended, yet."

Sir John found himself thinking of the first two chapters of The Book of Lies, which said
only "?" and "!"

The question mark or hunchback, Crowley went on, appeared in all the basic philosophical
problems that haunt mankind: Why are we here? Who or what put us here? What if anything can we
do about it? How do we get started? Where shall wisdom be found? Why was I born? Who am I?
"Unless you are confronted with immediate survival problems, due to poverty or to the deliberate
choice of an adventurous life, these hunchbacks will arise in your mind several times in an ordinary
hour," Crowley said. "They are generally pacified or banished by reciting the official answers of the
tribe into which you were born, or simply deciding that they are unanswerable." Some however,
Crowley went on, cannot rest in either blind tradition or resigned agnosticism, and must seek
answers for themselves, based on experience. Ordinary people, he said, are in a sense totally asleep
and do not even know it; those who persist in asking the questions can be described as struggling
toward wakefulness.

The soldier, or exclamation point, he continued, represents the moment of insight or intuition
in which a question is answered, as in the expressions "Aha!" or "Eureka!"

"I now present you, gratis, two of the nastiest hunchbacks I know," Crowley said, smiling
wickedly. "These two are presented to every candidate who comes to our Order seeking the Light.
Here they are:

"Number One: Why, of all the mystical and occult teachers in the world, did you come to
me?

"Number Two: Why, of all the days in your life, on this particular day?

"That is all you need to know," Crowley said. "I might as well leave the platform now, since,
if you can answer those questions, you are already Illuminated; and if you cannot, you are such
dunces that further words are wasted on you. But I will take mercy on you and give you the rest of
the lecture, anyway."

Crowley went on to define the state of modern philosophy (post-David Hume) as "an
assembly of hunchbacks." Everything has been called into question; every axiom has been
challenged -- "including Euclid's geometry among modern mathematicians"; nothing is certain
anymore. On all sides, Crowley said, we see only more hunchbacks -- questions, questions,
questions.

Traditional mysticism, Crowley continued, is a regiment of soldiers. The mystic, he said,
having attained an "Aha!" or "Eureka!" experience -- a sudden intuitive insight into the invisible
reality behind the subjective deceptions of the senses -- is apt to be so delighted with himself that he
never asks another question and stops thinking entirely. Out of this error, Crowley warned, flows
dogmatic religion, "a force almost as dangerous to true mysticism as it is to scientific or political
freedom."

The path of true Illumination, Crowley proceeded, walking to a blackboard at the right of the
room, does not consist of one intuitive insight after another. It is not a parade of soldiers, "like this,"
he said, writing on the board:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Anybody in that state is an imbecile or a catatonic, however blissful his lunacy may be,"
Crowley said sternly.

The true path of the Illuminati, Crowley stated more emphatically, is a series of soldiers and
hunchbacks in ever-accelerating series, which he sketched as:

?. . . . !. . . .?. . . !. . . ?. . !. . ?. !. ?
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! etc.

"To rest at any point, either in intuitive certainty or doubtful questioning," he said flatly, "is
to stagnate. Always seek the higher vision, whatever states of ecstatic insight you may have reached.
Always ask the next harder question, whatever questions you may have answered. The Light you are
seeking is quite correctly called ain soph auer in Cabala -- the limitless light -- and it has, quite
literally, the characteristics mathematicians such as Cantor have demonstrated belong to Infinity. As
the Upanishads say, 'You can empty infinity from it, and infinity still remains.' However deep your
union with the Light, it can become deeper, whether you call it Christ or Buddha or Brahm or Pan.
Since I am, thank God," he said the last two words with great piety, "an Atheist, I prefer to call it
Nothing -- since anything we say about it is finite and limited, whereas it is infinite and unlimited."

Crowley proceeded to discourse on the infinite with great detail, summarizing mathematical
theories on the subject with remarkable erudition and felicity. "But all this," he ended, "is not the
true infinite. It is only what our little monkey-minds have been able to comprehend so far. Ask the
next question. Seek the higher vision. That is the path that unites mysticism and rationalism, and
transcends both of them. As a great Poet has written:

We place no reliance
On Virgin or Pigeon;
Our method is Science,
Our aim is Religion.

Those blessed words!" he said raptly. "Holy be the name of the sage who wrote them!"

At this point Sir John was far from sure whether he had been listening to the highest wisdom
or the most pretentious mumbo jumbo he had ever heard. The Divine No-Thing was much like
certain concepts in Buddhism and Taoism, but it was also a nice way of seeming to utter
profundities while actually talking nonsense. But then, of course, Crowley's whole point had been
that anything said about infinity was itself Nothing in comparison with infinity itself. . .

With a start, Sir John realized that the lecture was over. The audience was applauding,
somewhat tentatively, most of them as confused by what they had heard as Sir John himself.

"You may now," Crowley said carelessly, "unburden yourselves of the thoughts with which
you passed the time while pretending to listen attentively to me; but in accord with English decorum
and the rituals of the public lecture, you must phrase these remarks in the form of questions."

There was a nervous laugh.

"What about Christ?" The speaker was a redfaced man with a walrus mustache; he seemed
more irritated by what he had heard than the rest of the audience. "You didn't say nuthin' about
Christ," he added aggrievedly.

"A lamentable oversight," Crowley said unctuously. "What about Christ, indeed? Personally,
I hold the man blameless for the religion that has been foisted upon him posthumously. Next
question -- the lady in the back row?"

"Is socialism inevitable?"

Sir John found himself wondering when Crowley would become aware of the Talisman and
attempt to cajole him into surrendering it. With horror he realized that such overwhelming of his
mind was possible: Crowley did possess charm, magnetism and charisma, like many servants of the
Demon. What was it Pope had written about Vice? A creature of such hideous mein/That to be hated
needs but be seen/But something something something/We first pity, then endure, then embrace. . .
"Many things are inevitable," Crowley was saying. "The tides. The seasons. The fact that the
questions after a lecture seldom have anything to do with the content of the lecture. . ." What do you
seek? The Light. The limitless light: ain soph auer. And the darkness knew it not. . .

"What about the Magick Will?" Sir John asked suddenly, during a pause.

"Ah," Crowley said. "That is a Significant Question." Somehow he conveyed the mocking
capitals by his intonation. "Such questions deserve to be answered with demonstrations, not with
mere windy words. Laylah," he called to the back of the room. "Could you bring the
psychoboulometer?"

Lola approached the podium with something that looked hideously like a medieval thumb-
screw.

"There is firstly conscious will," Crowley was saying, looking directly at Sir John. "We all
attempt to exercise this every day. 'I will give up smoking.' 'I will be true to my wife.' Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred such resolutions fail, because they are in conflict with the force that really
controls us, Unconscious Will, which can not be frustrated. Indeed, even the profane psychologists
have rediscovered what the mystics always knew: Unconscious Will, if prevented from acting,
returns in the night to haunt our dreams. And sometimes it returns in the daytime, too, in the form of
irrational behaviors which we cannot understand. Magick Will should not be confused with either of
these, because it includes both and is greater than both. To perform an act of Magick Will is to
achieve the Great Work, I might say. The holiest of all holy books says in this connection, 'Thou
hast no right but to do thy will.' Alas, if you think you are doing your true Will, without magickal
training, you are almost always deluding yourself. . . But I am engaging in the windy verbiage I
promised to avoid, and here is the implement of demonstration. Would anybody care to give us an
exhibit of what they can accomplish by conscious Will?"

"I think I shall give it a try," Sir John said, wondering at his own daring. "That's only fair
since I asked the question," he added, feeling inane.

"Well, then, good! Come up here, sir," Crowley said with a grin that was beginning to look a
bit sinister to Sir John. "We have here," he went on, holding the ugly thumb-screw so that everybody
could get a good view, "one of the implements once used by the Dominican Order to enforce the
religion which, as I said, has been foisted on Christ." He set the torture device on the podium. "They
used it as an instrument of torture, but we shall use it as a measure of Will."

Sir John was now standing beside Crowley, looking uneasily at the thumb-screw. "Just insert
your thumb, sir," Crowley said easily.

"What???" Sir John could hardly believe his ears.

"Just insert your thumb, down here," Crowley went on blandly, "and then turn the handle
which tightens the vise. The needle on the boulometer -- my own addition to this toy -- will register
how far you are able to withstand pain by sheer Will; 10 is a good score, and 0 means you are a
mere jellyfish. How far do you think you can go?"

Sir John felt every eye in the room upon him. He wanted to cry, "I am not such a fool as to
torture myself for your amusement," but -- he was even more afraid of appearing a public coward. Is
that why people go into armies? he asked himself grimly. . . "Very well," he said coldly, inserting
his thumb.

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
"You've only reached two in the boulometer," Crowley said. "The audience will think you're
not trying, sir."

"Damn you!" Sir John whispered, perspiration cold on his back. "I am done with this cruel
joke. Let us see how much better your Magick Will can do!"

"Certainly," Crowley said calmly. He inserted his thumb into the cruel mechanism, and
began turning the vise with slow deliberation. Not a muscle moved in his face. (Sir John suspected
that he had gone into a trance.) The needle on the boulometer crept slowly, accompanied by gasps
from the audience, all the way to 10.

"That," said Crowley gently, "might pass for an elementary demonstration of Magick Will."

There was a burst of spontaneous applause.

"It will also do," Crowley said, "as an illustration of our thesis about the soldier and the
hunchback. The first rule of our Magick is: never believe anything you hear and doubt most of what
you see." He turned the "psycho-boulometer" around, revealing that he had disengaged the screw
and had been turning the handle without actually tightening the vise. There was an angry gasp.

"Oh," Crowley said, "are you feeling cheated? Remember this, then: you are cheated the
same way every time emotional turmoil or fixed ideas distort your perception of what is actually
before your eyes. And remember to look for the hunchback behind every soldier."

The audience began to file out, muttering and chattering as excitedly as a group of
chimpanzees who had just found a mirror.

And then Sir John realized that Crowley had descended from the podium and was
approaching him.

"Sir John Babcock," Crowley said warmly, "did you ever hear the story of the man with a
mongoose in his basket?"

At least, unlike Lola, Crowley wasn't pretending not to recognize Sir John. "What
mongoose?" Babcock asked carefully.

"It was on a train," Crowley said. "This chap had a basket under his seat and another
passenger asked him what was in it. 'A mongoose,' he said. 'A mongoose!' said the other. 'What on
earth do you want with a mongoose?' 'Well,' said our hero, 'my brother drinks a great deal more than
is good for him, and sometimes he sees snakes. So I turn the mongoose on them.' The other
passenger was baffled by this logic. 'But those are imaginary snakes!' he exclaimed. 'Aha!' said our
hero. 'Do you think I don't know that? But this is an imaginary mongoose!'

Sir John laughed nervously.

"That's the way it is with talismans," Crowley said. "When a phantom climbs, the ghost of a
ladder serves him. But do keep that pentacle in your vest if it makes you feel better. I must go now.
We shall meet again."

And Sir John stared as Crowley made his way to the back of the room, where he greeted
Lola with a kiss. He whispered something; they both turned and looked back at Sir John; they waved

cheerfully. And then they were gone. 

Repentance, Rebellion, Resignation, Reincarnation

“….now I have been discussing four fundamental attitudes that are found in the various religions of the world towards the human predicament and as you see still on the blackboard they are given to be four hours instead of the three hours repentance opposite rebellion and resignation opposite reincarnation — the latter word being used in a special sense not in the ordinary sense of ‘rebirth’ but of an affirmation of the humanistic iment of getting with Life —

And this morning I discussed the attitude of repentance — The frame of mind in which it is felt that there is something profoundly wrong about being a self-conscious isolated individual Human Being and I try to show that when this attitude is carried to an extreme point, it results in your discovering that you are a total phony.

And I said that the difficulty of The Repentance Attitude is that people don't carry it through — with each screen part and they use the attitude of repentance and the indulgence in punishment for whatever they think is wrong about themselves as a kind of lifestyle — which assures you that You're in The Right.

they carve you her and because you insist that you're wrong sometimes suggested that this statement I am a sinner is logically equivalent to the statement quote this statement is false unquote because you see if that is a true statement it's a false statement and if it's a false statement at the true state and go on forever and to say I am a sinner is really the same thing because it implies that the statement itself since it is the statement on earth inner is the sinful statement and it could attract called a double by and so I thought often quitted my clergy friends about this and to their great amusement because the clergy are as bad as you might think least that many of them they have trouble in making it with their congregations and they clicked that their congregations will want the good old religion our wallowing in sin because come many congregations I found out love to be scolded and if you make everybody feel temporarily guilty but also make each individual feel assured that everybody else was more guilty than years this is an extremely much sought after emotional experience but the point that I was making was that if you pursue this idea of being sinful of being phony of being insincere to its ultimate point where you discover that all you do and all you are is a big act then this raises the question of what is reality what lies behind phone and so then and there you have an initiating experience because it leads in the discovery the fuel Connie shot called tatsumaki that about that the real you is not the isolated conscious ego that is only again being played all over the place by what there is not there and what there is is coextensive with the whole cosmos and is the imperishable reality and everyone is that but the game since era we started on the premise that existence is a game the game is hide-and-seek the gain is pretending that is not So we then move on you see to another possible response, not repentance, but that of resignation "I quit The Game, I won't play it." There are all sorts of ways of doing this but basically this is an aristocratic posture, "You ordinary mortals with all your Desires, and all your Involvements are deluded - You Get attached to Things. But there are a certain minority of Us, Who are above it all. And since We've resigned We're not going to follow This now. " This as I say is an artistocratic, [be aware] that it may be aristocratic in two ways There's the aristocracy of the Hindu Sannyasi the people outside and above caste and there's also the aristocracy of the actual aristocrat - I get so mixed up with my British and American pronunciation on this - but The Aristocrat who comes on with the position of always being bored, who has complete hogwash who is imperturbable Kaiser Ling's study of this mentality is marvelous in his book of Europe the essay on Hungary portrays the rightly he calls the grand signeur. He always identified himself as a type disrobe the grand familia cannot be saved, who could always be always rise to the occasion under any social circumstances whatsoever, without trying to do so or without apparently trying to do so. In other words if he goes to the Opera wearing blue jeans he will somehow make it apparent that everybody else is improperly dressed. This is a very interesting type of person you know there was an essay written by someone whose name I can't remember in the Centennial Review which contrasted the Attitude to Time of the aristocracy the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; It said The Aristocrat lives in The Past because his ancient forbears have achieved everything and his very by the fact of his birth in his existence he has nothing to strive for and he somehow I never need overdo it - he's always cool. The Bourgeois on the other hand feels that it's necessary to arrive and he's always striving for The Future Whereas the aristocrat lives in the past, on the other hand, the proletarian lives in the present because he doesn't care about his reputation and he just lives, and so of the two the bourgeois of the three the bourgeois is the sucker because the formula is always cheated because well it's going to come someday see you're going to get it even your money when you pull it out of your pocket, there says on it "Promise to Pay" - watch out for that! It's poverty and the bourgeoisie use the news on from the whole the whole economy is the United States being the great bourgeois country is in a state of expectancy of feeling happy, not on what you have but on what is going to come The Aristocrat is happy on what has happened, these great achievements of the past mean there's nothing left to do except sort of glory in it. The Proletarian wants it right now, see and they often get it; About the poor bourgeois, my uncle once said The Poor have it given them The Rich have it anyway so The Middle Classes do without So both the aristocrats and the sannyasi have resigned. Now, the more interesting of the two types is Acosta Sonia who resigns from The World Game, let me review for you the role of the sannyasin in Indian culture you know there are four castes because the priests or Brahmins the caste of warriors and rulers called Kshatriya the caste of merchants called Vasia and the caste of workers called Shudra And to belong to a caste means that you are in the state called grihastha, which is householder that is to say you are One Who is Involved in The World, you are engaged in what is called loca Sandra and loca means The Well, Sandra, upholding, upholding the going on of The Great Illusion and so you are playing for money for position for status, for success and hoping above all that you could win - You can beat The Game. But it's supposed in the same culture that every man who attains the age of or so, who has now a grown son to take over his work, will quit the game, will resign and so, when you come to be at age you're supposed to move from the state of grihastha, householder to vanaprastha which means forest dweller. You give away all your possessions to your son, you change your name, you take off your clothes and go more or less naked, because you have abandoned status. So in spite of the fact that he has no status, he is however respected in the culture for being an upper outcast, whereas the Aborigines of the Indian Peninsula are Untouchables the lower outcast and the upper outcast always mimics the lower for example Buddha had his disciple wear ochre robes because ochre robes were worn by convicts. So in the same way if today, in San Quentin, they all wear blue jeans with special kind pants and a kind of a blue denim jacket and this could well become the uniform of a new kind of sannyasi in the Western world and to some extent this is happening. So this guy says "The Game is not worth the cap, the richer I get the more miserable I get" You know how this is, you think that your problems may be monitored and you get more money. What do you do then we've got enough money, you start worrying about your health and you can never never stop worrying about that Or if you're not worried about your health you worry about politics, if somebody's going to take your money away from you, worried about taxes, about Who's Cheating You. And so a person who goes through all that he's finally "I don't think The Game's worth it, I'm going to resign." And so resignation or renunciation the difference from repentance it hasn't it hasn't got the same kind of passion in the resolve that the repentant person feels he's wrong who made a mistake has committed sin and wants to get better about the renounce first didn't concerns of that country he knows that better progress whether moral or material is an illusion and you have to understand this when you approach for example the study of Buddhism I think one of the most withering remarks I ever heard, from an oriental, he was Japanese he said once he was "Never forget that whereas Jesus was the Son of a Carpenter, Buddha was the son of a King" You know Wow! Take that! And it's choose it is something always about about that this is not the this is ead to see which Christianity historically was the protest of the slave class again if the Roman, establishment Buddhism was different it was the abandonment of position by an aristocracy - That We've done it We've seen it all we've had it so now we check out and we will be therefore we will resign from all games and if you follow this attitude to an extreme you're going to make because it all goes to the center the same discovery that is made by the person who follows repentance to an extreme. Just as The Repentant person discovers that his contrition is phony the person who tries to resign will discover that he can't, that there is no way of not playing games Let's go a little bit then into this Game Theory there are a lot of games that we play and not only the game of Can I get One Up on The Universe, of Pretending That I'm me This Ego, With Its Name and Its Role, The Man, but also we have what I call meta-games, for example the game My Games Better Than Your Game, or the game "I Won't Play With You Because Your Game is Vulgar, Stupid, Banal, Inferior or Whatever." One of the most, therefore, effective games in saying My Game is Better Than Your Game is that I'm Not Playing Games At All You are now at the lowest level we find that in the form of You're Not Sincere, I am sincere You are Fooling, I'm not Fooling You and Being Honest with You Now, that's a great game and of resignation is a form of it as to say you are children claim with toys and you haven't ever really woken up to the important concerns of life you haven't reached the dimension of ultimate sincerity all, that is to say Ultimate Reality, and in order to reach it you have to resign from distractions You hear a great deal in the literature about meditation of getting rid of distractions wandering for well I you might ask when you think about all that what are wandering for what are wrong for what shouldn't I be doing with my mind, well they all say actually every day you think about this and then you think about that in your thoughts run on in an undisciplined way from one association to another and you can't keep your mind fully on the job or whatever so you see, you're supposed to announce that because that's True Reality all those wandering thoughts they're not about the importance now what's important what should you keep your mind on well, something just as long as you keep your mind on. In an instruction one of the Buddhist scriptures says about concentration, when they concentrate on a yellow square on the ground, on the burning tip of an incense stick, on your navel, on the tip of your nose on the, center between the eyes, or anything. And then the footnote the commentator adds "But not on any wicked thing." As you know that commentators the world over, they never have any [sense of humour]. So anything will do just so long as you keep your mind on it, and don't wander, stick to it, so wandering is involvement in games, by this kind of definition, so then you try to get out can you now get out can you stop competing with other human beings In ancient Greek society there was a place in the center of the community called the argon AG om and this was a place for contests where they had wrestling matches and other athletic events because all the men were constantly trying to show who was the better and from this were the agonyax which means these the contest itself held in the argon we get our word agony, the struggle and striving to be superior and a lot of people that you meet among you, you will recognize this among your friends all the time are not happy unless they are involved in the contest it doesn't matter what it is, so long as they're trying to beat something they're happy And you may say over everything "You know can't we just sit around and talk instead of having to play a game, or bet or do something to prove who's the stronger...?" I was married to a girl who never was happy unless she was engaged in some kind of combat, when of course I had a game, it didn't look like one, and so it was a very superior game just because it didn't look like one, but it was a form of the game, my games that renews so you can't really not-play, you may go through the motions of not playing, but you still are. And one of the most marvelous examples of this is the Buddhist Sangha The Sangha means the order of Buddhist monks, or - monks isn't quite the right word because the basis of Buddhist monk-hood is a little different than Christian but I don't want to go into that technicality here are these people living in say Burma, Cylon, Thailand and so on who go around in yellow robes and never announce The World, but of course they've become as a community very prosperous empower and everybody you know makes the patients a month and feeds them and they don't they don't feed just on the rice gruel important monks get called into the houses of wealthy layer it and get given a fine dinners because the layman feels he's acquiring merit by being so generous to the month and you should see the scene in Japan although today the monks have lost their power to a large extent you can see the traces of the power they want hat in the Kyodo the Buddhist orders then Tendai and they especially shinshu sect have the best part of town if you stay a night in a Zen monastery as a guest go into one of the rooms there you are not in any hobble during the palace you live differently from the way we are customed - but you're liable to get shown into a room where the walls are entirely covered in gold leaf and painted by the greatest masters of Japan will say sit down to sleep by a car no motor no blue screen and the landscape around you the garden the views are gorgeous beyond belief this is the life of residence now it's true I know most about then monks rather than the other orders Zen monks live a pretty rough life but it's extremely Tony it's healthy it's it's absolutely non masochistic they have studied the art of enjoying poverty now this is a terribly important thing in the understanding of Far Eastern culture when a man in Japan diseases sort of inherits an old fashioned tradition makes a killing in business he doesn't go around showing off how much he does it he goes around showing off how little he possess even though he may drive to his office in a Mercedes or a Rolls Royce his house is relatively barren and he chooses objects of art and painting that look are extremely simple and he will likely as not have a separate house from his main huge establishment where it's like a Hermitage I mean it's almost as absurd in its own way as Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess after reading losses and having a little cottage rustic cottage the grounds of Zarephath but it's not quite as absurd as that because even the main house has an austerity about and they learn you see to love that offset to then it has the feeling of great comfort now you see what happened is this that long ago the best part of Kyoto the hill that ring the north side and each of the cities being so beautiful were owned by a bunch of Britons who were later the noble daimyo Lords of Japan great Google pounds and these people were as tough as all get-out they were always fighting and so the Buddhist monk rule did and decided they would take this property away from the Daniels buy out competing by playing the game our game more interesting than your game so they said to all those ridges so what you've attained all these conquests you have your castles you have your great estate within what it all falls apart you know especially when the brigand is getting a little elderly and has stomach troubles and the dizziness and so on and this month comes along and furthermore the Munsters you can't scare me and the Griffin Show huh and he pulls out his sword much but now the point is he can't kill them up that then and there because if he does that he won't find out whether the month was scared or not and so the month look straight in the eye and nothing happens he doesn't flinch and the brigham has now in a contact think and he puts the sword quite right against his throat well the monk has it right there but you see how in a way easy the game was because the mount knows that he wins his point he W if the brigand killed him before the monk flinches he's obviously cheated now since there is honor among thieves the chances are although that will sometimes be a Brigid will feel put down by this contest that therefore killed among the chances are that he went but look what the monk stands to gain if he wins Brigid Wow would I like to have that courage because if I had that courage I would be that much better a warrior so the monk says our peach and as a result of that the monk Bell teacher he teaches in the practices then zazen meditations and all this kind of thing and puts it through the the work and so he comes to understand what the monk did understand anyway which was that it really doesn't matter if you live or die because the thing goes on it's perfectly indestructible if you happen to die it just goes on in a new way because you are the works so fine but the monk is playing again and so as a result all these then communities got given the old palaces the brigands all moved to Tokyo and set up there in business and all around the great court and the gorgeous temple grounds went to the monks where all those none of them owns anything personally which is a great idea project you don't have any responsibility the community owns it and you don't have to pay any taxes and since you're a nonprofit organization you're not taxable anyway always a great job and they they really did do what they did in effect was the condos brigham out of the best land in Kyoto by resignation pipe laying a higher game but you see anyone who goes through that go through the Buddhist process of resignation will come to a point where he knows that he didn't resign at all and this is what makes the difference between pedestrian Buddhist monks who think they've resigned and I feel a little bit guilty because it's such a prosperous avail to design because you live in the best places and those ones who know who go right to cause to do the small residue of great Buddhist masters who discovered that they can't resign at all let's consider an extreme example of resignation the life of Mohammed Far Eastern literature is full of the idealization of the hermit's life the wonderful idea of an old man somewhere in the mountain far off in part how couid describe such an individual who can't be found nobody knows where he is he leaves no trace and they consider that is admirable to tell him you know which says I asked the boy beneath the pine he says the map has gone alone ferb gathering on the Mount called it whereabouts on them and that idea of the far off man way way there but what does the Hermit is trouble if you try this get as lonely as you can get you become visibly aware which you can't get away from it because when you get very lonely very fast you become extremely thin and everything that goes on is or no ordinarily unnoticed cum spiritum first of all you will find with the community of insects and they are tremendously interested in not necessarily hostile in maybe sometimes but but alone in the forest when you get really quiet you'll notice little creatures will come and inspect you look you all over and they'll go away and tell their friends and they'll come and look to see what it is and you become aware of every single sound and you realize that alone you're in the midst of a vast burning crowd may not be human but it's everything else so that the the point of being honest the discipline leads you to understand that you can't design the lonelier you are the more you're joined together with everything else how do you get more sensitive so then I find then I cannot give up playing League a look at it - from another point of view supposing I say everybody's playing the game me first now I'm going to play the game you first to use the phrase of Bonhoeffer who called Jesus the man for others now let's see if we could play that game instead of me first you first after you see you know you see you know run away this is putting everybody down see I'm the one see who's so generous I'm the one who's so loving so self-effacing and all you in syria brats could go first you could play me so I'll play you I'll try and convince you to play you fur but the success is convincing on that is relatively small and therefore the in-group will always be the people playing useless and therefore they will get the honor so when you think that through and you see I cannot stop playing these up there's no way of not doing it as well now what does it mean when I'm in a trap that I can't get out of there's no way of getting out of this trap well what it means is that you and the trap of the same thing you're not caught because when there's nobody in the trap there's no trap see that as long as you think you're in the trap then the traps got you when you know you as a trap then what is the trap got if you're trying to get out of the game you're trapped no way out but when you have found that you and the game are the same there's no game to get out of there's no one to get out of the game and that's true resignation and then you can take the point of view of the Bodhisattva as distinct from the are half the our heart in Buddhist not only is the person who escapes from the wheel of birth and death the samsara he gets out of the game so he stands here the Bodhisattva is the our house tops is the our house we've done arm to find out that you can't get out of the games all so the Bodhisattvas found over here in other words he goes back into the cycle of reincarnation and that doesn't bother about escaping him so in just the same way as repentance leads to the understanding that you're a phony even in repenting resignation leads to the understanding that even in resigning you can't design it isn't as if someone were saying you must play this game and you felt yourself under some sort of compulsion it's rather discovering that the game is what there is and to if you got out of it would be to be nowhere you don't have to play this is the point I'm going to repeat this because this is crucial it isn't that you have to play because that would make you feel a victim of some process beyond yourself that is compelling it is that the playing is you and nobody is shoving you around because you and the universe which seems to constrain you are not two things if you play the game that you are only here then you'll feel pushed around but when through trying to resign from either pushing around or being pushed around you discover that it can't be done you then become very much aware there is no point getting away from it where is the way so it said a true Zen month has a mountain Hermitage in any place that is down so let's have an admission