1. Preparationse

We must be mild and considerate to all, but in social relations must never permit ourselves to be absorbed, and must withdraw from circles in which we cannot acquire some initiative. Finally, we may and should fulfil the duties and practise the rites of the cultus to which we belong. Now, of all forms of worship the most magical is that which most realizes the miraculous, which bases the most inconceivable mysteries upon the highest reasons, which has lights equivalent to its shadows, which popularizes miracles, and incarnates God in all mankind by faith. This religion has existed always in the world, and under many names has been ever the one and ruling religion. It has now among the nations of the earth three apparently hostile forms, which are destined, however, to unite before long for the constitution of a universal Church. I refer to the Greek orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and a final transfiguration of the religion of Buddha. Hereunto therefore we have made it plain, as we believe, that our Magic is opposed to the goetic and necromantic kinds. It is at once an absolute science and religion, which should not indeed destroy and absorb all opinions and all forms of worship, but should regenerate and direct them by reconstituting the circle of initiates, and thus providing the blind masses with wise and clear-seeing leaders. We are living at a period when nothing remains to destroy and everything to remake. “Remake what? The past?” No one can remake the past. “What, then, shall we reconstruct? Temples and thrones?” To what purpose, since the former ones have been cast down? “You might as well say: my house has collapsed from age, of what use is it to build another?” But will the house that you contemplate erecting be like that which has fallen? No, for the one was old and the other will be new. “Notwithstanding, it will be always a house.” What else can you expect?