Always Wondering
I have been turning over the Little Essay on Love for a few months now and there are a couple things I either don’t understand or can’t come to terms with.
Is Crowley saying that love without passion is not love? Or that only sexual relationships involve love? And how does a black magical operation come from such tepid passions as regard, affection or kindliness? I was thinking love under will might be applied to those times in sexual relationships when there is little passion or combustion due to stress or illness, etc. I love friends and siblings with regard and affection, it's peaceful.
Okay, I don’t get the scorn and hatred. Opposites attract, (is this an over simplification?) where is the scorn and hatred in that? As a child budding into adolescence I have experienced this "boys are gross" stuff.
Any thoughts?
AW
Now it cannot be too clearly understood, or too acutely realised by means of action, that the intensity of the Joy liberated varies with the original degree of opposition between the two elements of the union. Heat, light, electricity are phenomena expressive of the fullness of passion, and their value is greatest when the diversity of the Energies composing the marriage is most strenuous. One obtains more from the explosion of Hydrogen and Oxygen than from the dull combination of substances indifferent to each other. Thus, the union of Nitrogen and Chlorine is so little satisfying to either molecule, that the resulting compound disintegrates with explosive violence at the slightest shock. We might say, then, in the language of Thelema, that such an act of love is not "love under will." It is, so to speak, a black magical operation.
Is Crowley saying that love without passion is not love? Or that only sexual relationships involve love? And how does a black magical operation come from such tepid passions as regard, affection or kindliness? I was thinking love under will might be applied to those times in sexual relationships when there is little passion or combustion due to stress or illness, etc. I love friends and siblings with regard and affection, it's peaceful.
Let us consider, in a figure, the "feelings' of a molecule of Hydrogen in the presence of one of Oxygen or of Chlorine. It is made to suffer intensely by the realisation of the extremity of its deviation from the perfect type of monad by the contemplation of an element so supremely opposed to its own nature at every point. So far as it is egoist, its reaction must be scorn and hatred; but as it understands by the true shame that is put upon its separateness by the presence of its opposite, these feelings turn to anguished yearning. It begins to crave the electric spark which will enable it to assuage its pangs by the annihilation of all those properties which constitute its separate existence, in the rapture of union, and at the same time to fulfil its passion to create a perfect type of Peace.
Okay, I don’t get the scorn and hatred. Opposites attract, (is this an over simplification?) where is the scorn and hatred in that? As a child budding into adolescence I have experienced this "boys are gross" stuff.
Any thoughts?
AW