The Key of the Mysteries

Part III

The Mysteries of Nature

Book II

Magical Mysteries

Chapter I
Theory of the Will

Human life and its innumerable difficulties have for object, in the ordination of eternal wisdom, the education of the will of man.

The dignity of man consists in doing what he will, and in willing the good, in conformity with the knowledge of truth.

The good in conformity with the true, is the just.

Justice is the practice of reason.

Reason is the work of reality.

Reality is the science of truth.

Truth is idea identical with being.

Man arrives at the absolute idea of being by two roads, experience and hypothesis.

Hypothesis is probable when it is necessitated by the teachings of experience; it is improbable or absurd when it is rejected by this teaching.

Experience is science, and hypothesis is faith.

True science necessarily admits faith; true faith necessarily reckons with science.

Pascal blasphemed against science, when he said that by reason man could not arrive at the knowledge of any truth.

In fact, Pascal died mad.

But Voltaire blasphemed no less against science, when he declare that every hypothesis of faith was absurd, and admitted for the rule of reason only the witness of the senses.

Moreover, the last word of Voltaire was this contradictory formula: "GOD AND LIBERTY."

God! that is to say, a Supreme Master, excludes every idea of liberty, as the school of Voltaire understood it.

And Liberty, by which is meant an absolute independence of any master, which excludes all idea of God.

The word GOD expresses the supreme personification of law, and by consequence, of duty; and if by the word LIBERTY, you are willing to accept our interpretation, THE RIGHT OF DOING ONE'S DUTY, we in our turn will take it for a motto, and we shall repeat, without contradiction and without error: "GOD AND LIBERTY."

As there is no liberty for man but in the order which results from the true and the good, one may say that the conquest of liberty is the great work of the human soul. Man, by freeing himself from his evil passions and their slavery, creates himself, as it were, a second time. Nature made him living and suffering; he makes himself happy and immortal; he thus becomes the representative of divinity upon earth, and (relatively) exercises its almighty power.

Axiom I

Nothing resists the will of man, when he knows the truth, and wills the good.

Axiom II

To will evil, is to will death. A perverse will is a beginning of suicide.

Axiom III

To will good with violence, is to will evil, for violence produces disorder, and disorder produces evil.

Axiom IV

One can, and one should, accept evil as the means of good; but one must never will it or do it, otherwise one would destroy with one hand what one builds with the other. Good faith never justifies bad means; it corrects them when one undergoes them, and condemns them when one takes them.

Axiom V

To have the right to possess always, one must will patiently and long.

Axiom VI

To pass one's life in willing that it is impossible to possess always, is to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death.

Axiom VII

The more obstacles the will surmounts, the stronger it is. It is for this reason that Christ glorified poverty and sorrow.

Axiom VIII

When the will is vowed to the absurd, it is reproved by eternal reason.

Axiom IX

The will of the just man is the will of God himself, and the law of Nature.

Axiom X

It is by the will that the intelligence sees. If the will is healthy, the sight is just. God said: "Let there be light!" and light is; the will says, "Let the world be as I will to see it!" and the intelligence sees it as the will has willed. This is the meaning of the word, "So be it," which confirms acts of faith.

Axiom XI

When one creates phantoms for oneself, one puts vampires into the world, and one must nourish these children of a voluntary nightmare with one's blood, one's life, one's intelligence, and one's reason, without ever satisfying them.

Axiom XII

To affirm and to will what ought to be is to create; to affirm and will what ought not to be, is to destroy.

Axiom XIII

Light[1] is an electric fire put by Nature at the service of the will; it lights those who know how to use it, it burns those who abuse it.

Axiom XIV

The empire of the world is the empire of the light.[2]

Axiom XV

Great intellects whose wills are badly balanced are like comets which are aborted suns.

Axiom XVI

To do nothing is as fatal as to do evil, but it is more cowardly. The most unpardonable of mortal sins is inertia.

Axiom XVII

To suffer is to work. A great sorrow suffered is a progress accomplished. Those who suffer much live more than those who do not suffer.

Axiom XVIII

Voluntary death from devotion is not suicide; it is the apotheosis of the will.

Axiom XIX

Fear is nothing but idleness of the will, and for that reason public opinion scourges cowards.

Axiom XX

Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will fear you. Say to sorrow: "I will that you be a pleasure, more even than a pleasure, a happiness."

Axiom XXI

A chain of iron is easier to break than a chain of flowers.

Axiom XXII