The Way I See It...

“Brethren and sisters of my circle
I acclaim thee all
When guiding stars are
clouded and deranged
Fear not to take my hand”
- Isahn









If you learn about history you will realize very quickly how incredibly lucky we are to be alive. today. To have the prosperity and resources to potentially engage with virtually all of the significant cultural achievements in the history of humanity. I’m not saying this to endorse some form of nationalism but wanted to start some sort of debate here on the question of how people here spend their time and how you justify that.
I reject careerism. I reject the pursuit of money as a valid path of personal development. I reject the status of society. The way I see it Obama, Harper, our elite are simply some dudes that were semi randomly placed to make this whole thing function, and they aren’t that good at it either. But for who? or for what? For people like you and me.
The truly great people I admire and want to follow are: the autodidactic, the wanderer, the saint- people concerned with the whole. There is no set career path to this end but it is a far more grand and epic approach to life! Discipline yourself! Craft yourself into the ideal person you envision! Morally, physically, intellectually. Suffering makes noble. That is the German word for passion: leidenschaft. Become a human being that is new and unique - who gives themselves laws! Start reading books of great wisdom and more importantly begin applying these in your day to day life.
This is the culture we should be nursing.
This is why I reject politics. Its a waste of time to try to change the world - nothing can be done (if your not in that position). Utopia is nihilism. All politicians from Hitler to Hillary Clinton at some stage in their career vehemently claim they have found the truth. Well, have they really?
That the reason I reject compassion. Compassion is the cross he who loves mankind is nailed to - as someone once write. Most people who affirm compassion aren’t really compassionate and those that really are I wouldn’t hinder. Let them be crucified!!! Pursue what most people do not understand: the intangible. Reach for a higher state of existence!
Drop out of university or only study part time. Academia is too expensive and requires specialization if it is to pay off.
Engage with other cultures and don’t simply become what your culture has taught you to be.
If you can find the money: travel! Live for extensive periods of time in other places. As Goethe wrote: he who knows one language knows none.
Live cheaply and don’t get sucked into an expensive lifestyle. Money is useful and that about it. Wealthy elitist type people who think their better because they are rich don’t know where its at. Just take a look at all the celebrities and people our society celebrates. These people are dysfunctional and full of problems. Bono himself is a Jenkem addict. (google this for more) and certainly do not represent a higher human type.
Surround yourself with people and friends who understand, appreciate and accept you for what you are. Internally.
Rigorously exercise every day.
Go for long slow walks by yourself.
Eat healthy food and live somewhere near nature.
Explore the institutions of other cultures.
Defy yourself in everything you do.
Find out what you are passionate about. Passion is more important than reason and one of the only emotions that truly justifies existence.

And where does this lead? What will you achieve? You ask.
You know you have overcome yourself, your time and your contemporaries when you are completely alone. Fuck everything else!

Black Metal as Spiritual Exercise Pt II

What is thought? Is thought not the means via which we cognitively emulate that which happens in reality? When someone tells me the fortress cannot be stormed I will evaluate that persons claim by imagining ways in which the fortress could be taken. And since the laws of the world conform to the logic cognitively at my disposal, I do not necessarily have to test my ideas in praxis. I simply need to think.
As such, it is legitimate to claim that things which exist for very long times (such as for instance the ruins of the city Ur) have been subject to the laws of the world as though a very rudimentary force has been trying to perpetually test ways to which it’s ziggurat might not withstand. This, metaforce acting in the world, is present everywhere. It isn’t something tangible but something we abduce by observing what is given. Friedrich Nietzsche described architecture as mans triumph over gravity. Gravity is an instantiation of this metaforce. A law of the world that just as a thinking person, though not self reflexively and definitively slower, attempts to critique everything which comes to be. The world thinks. It thinks like a nihilist. A universal consciousness, an Urgeist that seeks to outdo everything humanity will create.
In the words of Goethe’s Mephistopheles: “Ich bin ein teil von jener kraft die stehts das Boese will, doch stehts das gute schafft. Ich bin der Geist der stehts verneint, und das mit recht. Denn alles was entsteht ist es werd das es zugrunde geht. “
We human beings are not at war with ourselves. We are at war with the urgeist and there are moments everyone has experienced when they have triumphed over this most ancient of physical laws. Black metal provides us with a clear path towards transcendence. It is an art form that, at its highest, presents us with experiences which Goethe’s Faust called” verwahre doch, du bist so schoen.” Moments in which Faust could say that’s it. I’ve found it! Damn my soul to the devil. Most of our treadmill squirrel trap culture contemporaries seek this experience in false dreams presented to them by adverts and consumerism but there is universal tendency amongst our race, we who strive to be immortal, to playfully create and imbue existence with experiences that we want to continue - eternally. Friedrich Nietzsche in what he describes as the greatest thought he ever had, presented us with a clear path towards evaluating everything that confronts us. Black metal included. It is the thought of the eternal return (Gay Science Aphorism II) This, the greatest of ideas is the supreme test of all that we can experience. Black metal included...
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” writes Plato. It is time the human race united not against itself but against the urgeist. It is time the human race began thinking. In the words of DJ Goat: “Eternity if yours, if you make the infinite real.”
- Wahn

Black Metal as Spiritual Exercise

One of the many consciousness benefits attained through intensive study of certain meditation discplines (such as Zazen) is an awareness of and competenced in dealing with pain. Although this might sound grim, the basic idea is not. Zazen for instance requires, if practiced seriously, sitting quietly in the lotus posuter for 90 minutes. Serious zen students (myself incluced) do this regularly (perhaps 4times a year) 5 times in a day (with breaks) on top of our usual weekly meditation regimen. These are called zen nights at some dojos and ojne cannot complete a zen night withouth having to quietly sit, meditating on ones aching body. At some statge sduring the zen night, physical pain will peak and the student will have to exert their will. Attention is brought onto iones breath and eventually the physical pain will fade. One enters a new and to many unknown level of consciousness.

Many of the individuals I have known who have for extensive parts of their life been deeply absorbed in black metal have a certain strength and ability to confront problems other individuals lack. Black Metal, like zazen, is a spiritual exercise. Our genre teaches people to go beyond immediate thoughts that might arise in difficult circumstances, to concentrate on the situation until it even becomes beautiful.

This willingness to struggle is a fundamental feature of any high culture. Not to sound chauvinistic, indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche himself opposed war for the very simple fact that it acts as a distraction from what is really important: self cultivation. Self mastery. Our society has lost touch with this principle. If you look at anything from cuisine to the most valued cultural achievements of our time you will find an element of artificiality that is based upon molding the world into what is convenient. Not to say that this is a reason to reject all of “modern society” – I take off my hat to anyone who has understood the historical opriogins of this very interesting experiement - but this patent observation does call for a solution. The rare and gifted individuals always exemplify certain degree of artifstic and personal perfection that they try to tacitly communicate in their work. People today, regardless of how stupid or intelligent they are, have generally forgotten to appreciate the pursuit of perfection. From politics, through film to the music industry, all of which resemble each other in that they are far away from anything that could ber called a meritocracy, are nothing but attempt to conform to the most convenient behavioral patterns as experienced by the majority of people. This spiritual sloppiness has found itself all the way to the hallowed halls of learning. Psychology as a discipline has even defined the healthy individuals based on studies of ordinary men and women as opposed to the exceptional. Our philosophers, people like peter singer, confidently claim that “pleasure is the only thing of intrinsic value” The ideal human being today is the ultimate couch potato and Friedrich Nietzche knew this when he wrote that “democracy is the tyrrany of the evil men”

Black metal as a genre stands “as a stone in the stream of our time” to use the words of Evola. We, the NMRG, are working to establish as serious and committed sub culture here in Toronto where individuals can free themselves of careerism, petty greed and forced specialization to pursue and cultivate our art. Black Metal. We are not some shallow “radical” political organization many of whom have and will accomplished nothing of substance. The NMRG stands in defiance to the status quo when we call upon the GTA scene to:
- Educate and discipline itself
- Produce and celebrate talented musicians
- Refuse to endorse incompetence
- Seeing value in things that cannot be paid for
- Stop attending shows by morons such as inertia entertainment who want nothing of our genre but money

And what makes some music better than others? Hwo do we justify our plroubdly explaimed elitism? Black metal is not friendly. We are not a culture that wants to be happy. It is the eternal that we are after. Musicians that will write albums still heard in generations to come, individuals so healthy they will outlive most others, minds so absorbed in the history of though that they cannot be called subjective. In the words of DJ Goat of KCUF radio: “Reach to eternity and you will find the end: the end of life, the end of vision, the end of existence itself.” To us, this is the most beautiful sight. It is this union of good and evil that makes black metal a spiritual exercise. We strive to be immortal and revel in its impossibility.

Is overpopulation a problem? How many people leading which type of life can this planet sustain indefinitely? The latter is a question that has been asked surprisingly seldom. Clear however is that throughout the recent history of our planet, human population has grown significantly, whilst environmental resilience has declined. Since environmental science has shown that our planet is under stress the majority of the literature focuses on reducing consumption whilst forgetting that only the “lack of a consumer means no consumption at all.” Indeed, for practically purposes it makes sense to define a human being as someone who consumes.
Nonetheless, there is debate surrounding the question of how many people this planet can support. It has to be noted that 20% of the world's peoples are consuming 80% of the earth’s resources which raises the question of quality of life. It thus becomes apparent that population itself is not the sole problem since technology, industry, culture, policy, economics and everything that constitutes the entire global society comes into play. Thus the actual studies into the question of the earth’s carrying capacity yield a tremendously broad spectrum of answers ranging from 1 billion to 1000 billion . Further complicating the issue is the disagreement amongst mainstream and neo-Malthusian economists in determining to what degree and under what conditions rational family planning will increase population. Illustrative of the interconnectedness of the population problem with other issues are cities in developing countries; places where pollution is rampant and populations explode. Many thinkers argue that once these countries have achieved a certain level of affluence they will pass through a “demographic transition” and the population will decrease as it is currently in for instance Germany; thus in turn relating population trends to currents in economics, politics and culture. As is well known, the United Nations predicts population to stabilize globally at about 2050.
Clear, however, as the oft cited IPAT equation suggests (environmental impact (I) = population (P) x affluence (A) x technology (T)) population is a part of the equation and by dismissing population as part of environmental trends the environmental community lets, for instance, the pope dominate the population discourse by calling for people to reproduce more. Indeed, if overpopulation is not on the table, then an increase in the world population should have no impact on the environment which patently is not the case.
How does population relate to Biodiversity? The most immediate connection is that population is growing in the developing world whilst biodiversity is likewise being predominantly lost in developing countries. There is a clear relationship between population levels and biodiversity. Habit destruction is the prime cause of biodiversity extinction. In developing countries (where populations are growing ) most biologically diverse regions are cleared for agriculture. At the same time, human population has increased in direct proportion to agricultural yields. Thus, in view of my definition of biodiversity loss as an index of sustainability, it becomes clear very quickly that we are overpopulated and that overpopulation is determinative of extinction. The argument that 20% of the world’s peoples consume 80% of the world’s resources only underlines the importance of factoring population growth into policies aimed at mitigating environmental decline since poor countries are developing towards the western (more destructive) model. The argument that merely the rich are responsible for destroying the earth overlooks the fact that they are made wealthier by virtue of the practices of the people. The cause of environmental decline is thus more systemic and deeper.



Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), xxx
Ron Nielson, The Little Green Handbook.
Daniel Chiras, Environmental Science (Redwood City: Benjamin/Cummings Publications, 1991) 93.
John Feney, “Sowing the seeds of a future society” in Growth is Madness (United States, 2008) http://growthmadness.org/2008/01/17/sowing-the-seeds-of-a-future-society/ (accessed March 26, 2008)
Joel E Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (New York: Norton and Company, 1995), 368.
Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), 283.
Daniel Chiras, Environmental Science (Redwood City: Benjamin/Cummings Publications, 1991) 142.
James Gustav Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (Yale: Yale University Press, 2004), 12.
United Nations, “Population to 2300” in Economic and Social Affairs (United Nations, 2004) http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf (accessed March 28, 2009)
Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northanpton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), 283.
John L Gittleman and Mathew E Gomper, “What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You,” Science Vol. 291. no. 5506, (2001) 997 – 999 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;291/5506/997?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=causes+of+extinction&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT (accessed March 20, 2009)
Stuart Mudd The Population Crisis and the Use of World Resources (The Hague: Dr. W. Junk Publishers, 1964) 16.
National Research Council Population, Land Use, and Environment (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 2005), 157.
Wolfgang Lutz, Population and Environment (New York: Population Council, 2002), 96.

Biodiversity Loss

There are many issues facing the world at present, the most hard to refute, dangerous for our planet and disturbing in its long term consequences is probably the daily mass extinction of species commonly referred to as the “Holocene”. In the 439 Million year history of planet earth, “five great extinction events have reshaped earth in cataclysmic ways [...] each one wiping out between 50 and 95 percent of the life of the day, including the dominant life forms”. Today, biologists say, we are living in the sixth; the “Holocene.” The World Conservation Union established and maintains a list (The Red List); a database of all known species. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientist in the World Conservation Union have assessed:
1. “One in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 percent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants”
2. The Current rate of extinction is 100 times that of the background rate whilst the eminent biologist Edward O Wilson, among others, argues that it is in fact 1,000 to 10,000 that of the background rate.
3. “Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100,” not to mention that the biodiversity already lost will take 10 million years to re-establish itself in a different form. The holocaust and the two world wars will not be remembered as what is currently happening to the earth by future generations.
And although the relationship between human activity and the Holocene extinction event is well documented it is clear that the phenomena described above, if left unchecked, will also negatively impact Ontario’s biodiversity, whilst the locality’s ecosystems would flourish, as they have done for millennia, without industrial influence. Indeed, there are a number of species, such as the woodland caribou and eastern wolf, threatened by activities such as loss of habitat due to logging. This is well documented. There are 400 species in total listed in Canada’s “National Species at Risk Act.” A 2001 article in the journal Science listed the “Evil Quartet” of extinction causes: habitat destruction, overexploitation, introduced species, and secondary extinctions – all of which have human origins.


Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

John L Gittleman and Mathew E Gomper, “What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You,” Science Vol. 291. no. 5506, (2001) 997 – 999 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;291/5506/997?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=causes+of+extinction&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT (accessed March 20, 2009)

About The Ascension Society

The Ascension Society is a thought experiment. No - we are more: we are a dream experiement. We are thinkers and dreamers. We are asking the hypothetical question of what it would take for us to terraforma and colonize Titan, the largest moon of saturn. We attempt to theoretically re-evalutate contemporary culture to this end. in so doing we hope to provide visitors with novel information on:

- How civilizations collapse
- Flaws in the status quo
- Links to interesting news sites
- Radical and fringe ideas

The Futurist Manifesto

Any cultural movement (including psytrance) needs to be aware of its past if it is to be or merit. Psytrance is futurism, Futurism has a history.
Although I personally reject some of the statements made in here (they are no longer realistic in the current spirit of our time - to say the least) I believe that the basic sentiment, the desire for ascent, is a good one. It needs to be harnassed and sublimated into something greater than a glorification of war and destruction.



The Futurist Manifesto
F. T. Marinetti, 1909
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

`Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.'

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel - a guillotine knife - which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `smell is good enough for wild beasts!'

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: `We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors,' it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

"Duty" by Aleister Crowley

Duty
by Aleister Crowley
(a note on the chief rules of practical conduct to be observed by those who accept the Law of Thelema.)

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
"...thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."
"Love is the law, love under will."
"Every man and every woman is a star."
Your Duty to Yourself
Find yourself to be the centre of your own Universe
"I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star."
Explore the Nature and Powers of your own Being.
This includes everything which is, or can be for you: and you must accept everything exactly as it is in itself, as one of the factors which go to make up your True Self. This True Self thus ultimately includes all things soever: its discovery is Initiation (the travelling inwards) and as its Nature is to move continually, it must be understood not as static, but as dynamic, not as a Noun but as a Verb.
Develop in due harmony and proportion every faculty which you possess.
"Wisdom says: be strong!"
"But exceed! exceed!"
"Be strong, o man, lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this"
Contemplate your own Nature.
Consider every element thereof both separately and in relation to all the rest as to judge accurately the true purpose of the totality of your Being.
Find the formula of this purpose, or "True Will", in an expression as simple as possible.
Leave to understand clearly how best to manipulate the energies which you control to obtain the results most favourable to it from its relations with the part of the Universe which you do not yet control.
Extend the dominion of your consciousness, and its control of all forces alien to it, to the utmost.
Do this by the ever stronger and more skilful application of your faculties to the finer, clearer, fuller, and more accurate perception, the better understanding, and the more wisely ordered government, of that external Universe.
Never permit the thought or will of any other Being to interfere with your own.
Be constantly vigilant to resent, and on the alert to resist, with unvanquishable ardour and vehemence of passion unquenchable, every attempt of any other Being to influence you otherwise than by contributing new facts to your experience of the Universe, or by assisting you to reach a higher synthesis of Truth by the mode of passionate fusion.
Do not repress or restrict any true instinct of your Nature; but devote all in perfection to the sole service of your one True Will.
"Be goodly therefore"
"The Word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife if she will. O lover, if thou wilt, depart. There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed! be it to the aeons. Hell. So with thy all: thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."
"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and Spices; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth is Splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy."
Rejoice!
"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains."
"But ye, o my people, rise up and awake! Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy and beauty! ... A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death! A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture. A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight. Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is no dissolution and eternal ecstacy in the kisses of Nu."
"Now rejoice! now come in our splendour and rapture! Come in our passionate peace, & write sweet words for the Kings!"
"Thrill with the joy of life & death! Ah! thy death shall be lovely: whose seeth it shall be glad. Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Come! lift up thy heart & rejoice!"
"Is God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us. They shall rejoice: who sorroweth is not of use. Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious langour, force and fire, are of us."
Your Duty to Other Individual Men and Women
"Love is the law, love under will."
Unite yourself passionately with every other form of consciousness, thus destroying the sense of separateness from the Whole, and creating a new base-line in the Universe from which to measure it.
"As brothers fight ye."
"If he be a king thou canst not hurt him."
To bring out saliently the differences between two points-of-view is useful to both in measuring the position of each in the whole. Combat stimulates the virile or creative energy; and, like love, of which it is one form, excites the mind to an orgasm which enables it to transcend its rational dullness.
Abstain from all interferences with other wills.
"Beware lest any force another, King against King!"
(The love and war in the previous injunctions are of the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns from the opponent, but never interferes with him, outside the actual game.) To seek to dominate or influence another is to seek to deform or destroy him; and he is a necessary part of one's own Universe, that is, of one's self.
Seek, if you so will, to enlighten another when need arises.
This may be done, always with the strict respect for the attitude of the good sportsman, when he is in distress through failure to understand himself clearly, especially when he specifically demands help; for his darkness may hinder one's perception of his perfection. (Yet also his darkness may serve as a warning, or excite one's interest.) It is also lawful when his ignorance has lead him to interfere with one's will. All interference is in any case dangerous, and demands the exercise of extreme skill and good judgement, fortified by experience. To influence another is to leave one's citadel unguarded; and the attempt commonly ends in losing one's own self-supremacy.
Worship all!
"Every man and every woman is a star."
"Mercy let be off: damn those who pity."
"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery: For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live! Now let it be understood if the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstacy for ever. Nuit Hadit Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The Sun, Strength and Sight, Light these are for the servants of the Star & the Snake."
Each being is, exactly as you are, the sole centre of a Universe in no wise identical with, or even assimilable to, your own. The impersonal Universe of "Nature" is only an abstraction, approximately true, of the factors which it is convenient to regard as common to all. The Universe of another is therefore necessarily unknown to, and unknowable by, you; but it induces currents of energy in yours by determining in part your reactions. Use men and women, therefore, with the absolute respect due to inviolable standards of measurement; verify your own observations by comparison with similar judgements made by them; and, studying the methods which determine their failure or success, acquire for yourself the wit and skill required to cope with your own problems.
Your Duty to Mankind
Establish the Law of Thelema as the sole basis of conduct.
The general welfare of the race being necessary in many respects to your own, that well-being, like your own, principally a function of the intellegent and wise observance of the Law of Thelema, it is of the very first importance to you that every individual should accept frankly that Law, and strictly govern himself in full accordance therewith.
You may regard the establishment of the Law of Thelema as an essential element of your True Will, since, whatever the ultimate nature of that Will, the evident condition of putting it into execution is freedom from external interference.
Governments often exhibit the most deplorable stupidity, however enlightened may be the men who compose and constitute them, or the people whose destinies they direct. It is therefore incumbent on every man and woman to take the proper steps to cause the revisions of all existing statutes on the basis of the Law of Thelema. This Law being a Law of Liberty, the aim of the legislation must be to secure the amplest freedom for each individual in the state, eschewing the presumptious assumption that any given positive ideal is worthy to be obtained.
"The Word of Sin is Restriction."
The essence of crime is that it restricts the freedom of the individual outraged. (Thus, murder restricts his right to live; robbery, his right to enjoy the fruits of his labour; coining, his right to the guarantee of the State that he shall barter in security; etc.) It is then the common duty to prevent crime by segregating the criminal, and by the threat of reprisals; also, to teach the criminal that his acts, being analyzed, are contrary to his own True Will. (This may often be accomplished by taking from him the right which he has denied to others; as by outlawing the thief, so that he feels constant anxiety for the safety of his own possessions, removed from the ward of the State.) The rule is quite simple. He who violated any right declares magically that it does not exist; therefore it no longer does so, for him.
Crime being a direct spiritual violation of the Law of Thelema, it should not be tolerated in the community. Those who possess the instinct should be segregated in a settlement to build up a state of their own, so to learn the necessity of themselves imposing and maintaining rules of justice.
All artificial crimes should be abolished. When fantastic restrictions disappear, the greater freedom of the individual will itself teach him to avoid acts which really restrict natural rights. Thus real crime will diminish dramatically.
The administration of the Law should be simplified by training men of uprightness and discretion whose will is to fulfill this function in the community to decide all complaints by the abstract principle of the Law of Thelema, and to award judgement on the basis of the actual restriction caused by the offense.
The ultimate aim is thus to reintegrate conscience, on true scientific principles, as the warden of conduct, the monitor of the people, and the guarantee of the governors.
Your Duty to All Other Beings and Things
Apply the Law of Thelema to all problems of fitness, use, and development.
It is a violation of the Law of Thelema to abuse the natural qualities of any animal or object by diverting it from its proper function, as determined by consideration of its history and structure. Thus, to train children to perform mental operations, or to practice tasks, for which they are unfitted, is a crime against nature. Similarly, to build houses of rotten material, to adulterate food, to destroy forests, etc., etc., is to offend.
The Law of Thelema is to be applied unflinchingly to decide every question of conduct. The inherent fitness of any thing for any proposed use should be the sole criterion.
Apparent, and sometimes even real, conflict between interests will frequently arise. Such cases are to be decided by the general value of the contending parties in the scale of Nature. Thus, a tree has a right to its life; but a man being more than a tree, he may cut it down for fuel or shelter when need arises. Even so, let him remember that the Law never fails to avenge infractions: as when wanton deforestation has ruined a climate or a soil, or as when the importation of rabbits for a cheap supply of food has created a plague.
Observe that the violation of the Law of Thelema produces cumulative ills. The drain of the agricultural population to big cities, due chiefly to persuading them to abandon their natural ideals, has not only made the country less tolerable to the peasant, but debauched the town. And the error tends to increase in geometrical progression, until a remedy has become almost inconceivable and the whole structure of society is threatened with ruin.
The wise application based on observation and experience of the Law of Thelema is to work in conscious harmony with Evolution. Experiments in creation, involving variation from existing types, are lawful and necessary. Their value is to be judged by their fertility as bearing witness to their harmony with the course of nature towards perfection.