Addendum

As an addendum to yesterday's post about Crowley's The Book of the Law, I want to make something clear about the text. Both Crowley's intro to the text and his postscript are written rather gauchely. Because, in the postscript, Crowley inappropriately suggests that the book should not be studied, for fear of the life of the individual who might study it, he comes across as rather a histrionic adolescent; or, as we see here, The Fool. The Fool on the Hill does, indeed, have a problem; through fooling around with states of non-being and nothingness, while trying to seem to himself like a substantial individual, a something, as it were, on the surface, the Fool has reduced himself to a Zero-state. As he plummets off the cliff, he is a reminder not to be half-assed, where Nothing/Something dichotomies are concerned. Crowley could have used this reminder. Those who will study The Book of the Law, for its literary excellence, will just have to deal with an author unwilling to handle what he has created, and who is more than willing to play the fool.