To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules – but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.
Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them.
Those magicians who object to the use of blood, have endeavored to replace it with incense. But, the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious. And for nearly all purposes, human sacrifice is the best.
Every incarnation that we remember must increase our comprehension of ourselves as who we are.
To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.
To use legal or financial constraint to compel either abstention or submission, is entirely horrible, unnatural and absurd.
The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.
This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity.
There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, Garcon! Un Pernod!
Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations.
The intention of this Book of The Law is perfectly simple. Whatever your sexual predilections may be, you are free, by the Law of Thelema, to the the star you are, to go your own way rejoicing.
In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it.
Happiness lies within one’s self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.
I was not content to just believe in Satan. I wanted to be his chief or staff.
I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated.
Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out! The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elementary stage.
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.