BAPHOMET XI


Concerning "Blasphemy"
in General
& the
Rites of Eleusis
in Particular



This essay by Crowley first appeared in The Bystander during his staging of
the Rites of Eleusis at Caxton Hall, London in 1910 E.V. This republication
is respectfully dedicated to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.H.B.



PIONEERS, O PIONEERS!


Whenever it occurs to anyone to cut a new canal of any kind, he will be well
advised to look out for trouble. If it be the ishthmus of Suez, the
simple-minded engineer is apt to imagine that it is only a question of
shifting so much sand; but before he can as much as strike the first pickaxe
into the earch he finds that he is up against all kinds of interests, social,
political, financial, and what-not. The same applies to the digging of canals
in the human brain. When Simpson introduced chloroform, he thought it a
matter for the physician; and found himself attacked from the pulpit. All his
arguments proved useless; and we should probably be without chloroform to-day
if some genius had not befriended him by discovering that God caused Adam to
fall into a deep sleep before He removed the rib of which Eve was made.


THE ABUSE OF THE GUTTER


Nowadays a movement has to be very well on the way to success before it is
attacked by any responsible people. The first trouble comes from the gutter.
Now the language of the gutter consists chiefly of meaningless abuse, and the
principal catch-words, coming as they do from the mouths of men who never
open them without a profane oath or a foul allusion, are those of blasphemy
and immorality. The charge of insanity is frequently added when the new idea
is just sufficiently easy to understand a little. There is another reason,
too, for these three particular cries; these are the charges which, if
proved, can get the person into trouble, and at the same time which are in
a sense true of everybody; for they all refer to a more or less arbitrary
standard of normality. The old cry of ``heresy" has naturally lost much of
its force in a country nine-tenths of whose population are admittedly
heretics; but immorality and insanity are to-day almost equally meaningless
terms. The Censor permits musical comedy and forbids Oedipus Rex; and Mr.
Bernard Shaw brands the Censor as immoral for doing so. Most people of the
educated classes will probably agree with him.


INSANITY AND BLASPHEMY


As for insanity, it is simply a question of finding a Greek or Latin name for
any given act. If I open the window, it is on account of claustrophobia; when
I shut it again, it is an attack of agarophobia. All the professors tell me
that every form of emotion has its root in sex, and describe my fondness for
pictures as if it were a peculiarly unnatural type of vice. It is even
impossible for an architect to build a church spire without being told that
he is reviving the worship of Priapus. Now, the only result of all this is
that all these terms of abuse have become entirely meaningless, save as
defined by law. There is still some meaning in the term ``Forger," as used
in general speech; but only because it has not yet occurred to any wiseacre
to prove that all his political and religious opponents are forgers. This
seems to me a pity. There is, undoubtedly, a forged passage in Tacitus and
another in Petronius. Everyone who studies the classics is, therefore, a kind
of accomplice in forgery. The charge of blasphemy is in all cases a
particularly senseless one. It has been hurled in turn at Socrates,
Euripides, Christ, El-Mansur, the Baab, and the Rev. R. J. Campbell.


THE MORALITY RED HERRING


Legal blasphemy is, of course, an entirely different thing. In the recent
notorious case where an agent of the Rationalist Press Association, Harry
Boulter by name, was prosecuted, the question proved to be not a theological
one at all. It was really this, ``were the neighbours being annoyed?" ``was
the man's language coarse?" and the Judge and Joseph McCabe agreed that it
was. But in modern times no one has ever been prosecuted in any civilised
country for stating philosophic propositions, whatever may be their
theological implicatons. We have no longer the Casuists of the Inquisition,
who would take the trouble to argue from Bruno's propositions of the
immanence of God that, if that were so, the doctrine of the Incarnation was
untenable (and therefore he shall be burned). It is only the very narrowest
religious sects that trouble to call Herbert Spencer an Atheist. What the man
in the street means by Atheist is the militant Atheist, Bradlaugh or Foote;
and it is a singular characteristic of the Odium Theologicum that, instead
of arguing soberly concerning the proposition, which those worthies put
forward, they always try to drag the red herring of morality across the
track. Of all the stupid lies that men have ever invented, nothing is much
sillier than the lie that one who does not believe in God must be equally a
disbeliever in morality. As a matter of fact, in a country which pretends so
hard to appear theistic as England, it requires the most astounding moral
courage, a positive galaxy of virtues, for a man to stand up and say that he
does not believe in God; as Dr. Wace historically remarked, ``it ought to be
unpleasant for a man to say that he does not believe in Jesus"; and my
dislike to Atheism is principally founded on the fact that so many of its
exponents are always boring me about ethics. Some priceless idiot, who, I
hope, will finish in the British Museum, remarked in a free-thinking paper
the other day, that they need not trouble to pull down the churches,
``because they will always be so useful for sane and serious discussion of
important ethical problems." Personally, I would rather go back to the times
when the preacher preached by the hour-glass.


THE POT AND THE KETTLE


I have always been very amused, too, in this connection of blasphemy by the
perusal of Christian Missionary journals, on which I was largely brought up.
They are full from cover to cover of the most scandalous falsehoods about
heathen gods, and the most senseless insults to them, insults penned by the
grossly ignorant of our religious population. It is only in quite recent
years that the English public have discovered that Buddha was not a God, and
it was not the missionaries that found this out, but scholars of secular
attainment. In America, particularly, the most incredible falsehood are
constantly circulated by the Missionary Societies even about the customs of
the Hindoos. To read them, one would suppose that every crocodile in India
was fed with babies as the first religious duty of every Indian mother; but,
of course, it is most terribly wicked for the Hindoo to make fun of the
deities of the American. For my part, who have lived half my life in
``Christian" countries and half my life in ``heathen" countries, I cannot
see much to choose between the different religions. Their arguments consist,
in the end, of passionate assertion, which is no argument at all.


RELIGION AND DRAW-POKER


There is an excellent storymuch better known in India than in Englandof a
missionary, who was explaining to the poor heathen how useless were his gods.
``See!" said he, ``I insult your idol, he is but of dead stone; he does not
avenge himself, or punish me." ``I insult your God," replied the Hindoo,
``he is invisible; he does not avenge himself, or punish me." ``Ah!" said
the missionary, ``my God will punish you when you die"; and the poor Hindoo
could only find the following pitiable answer: ``So, when you die, will my
idol punish you." It was from America, too, that I obtained the first
principle of religion; which is that four to a flush are not as good as one
small pair.


ORGIES!


Still, I suppose it is useless to contest the popular view that anyone whom
any fool chooses to call an Atheist is liable to conduct ``orgies." Now, can
anyone tell me what orgies are? No? Then I must reach down the Lexicon.
Orgia, only used in the plural and connected with Ergon (work), means sacred
rites, sacred worship practised by the initiated at the sacred worship of
Demeter at Eleusis, and also the rites of Bacchus. It also means any rites,
or worship, or sacrifice, of any mysteries without any reference to religion;
and Orgazio means, therefore, to celebrate Orgies, or ceremonies, or to
celebrate any sacred rites. It is really a poor comment upon the celebration
of sacred rites that the word should have come to mean something entirely
different, as it does to-day. For the man in the street Orgie means a wild
revel usually accompanied by drunkenness. I think it is almost time that
someone took the word Orgie as a Battle Cry, and, having shown that the
Eucharist is only one kind of orgie to restore the true enthusiasm (which is
not of an alcoholic or sexual nature) among the laity; for it is no secret
that the falling away of all nations from religion, which only a few
blind-worms are fatuous enough to deny, is due to the fact that the fire no
longer burns in the sacred lamp. Outside a few monasteries there is hardly
any church of any sect whose members really expect anything to happen to them
from attending public worship. It a new Saint Paul were to journey to
Damascus, the doctor would be called in and his heavenly vision diagnosed as
epilepsy. If a new Mahomed came from his cave and announced himself a
messenger of God, he would be thought a harmless lunatic. And that is the
first stage of a religious propaganda.


THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS


Now the real messenger of God can always be distinguished in a very simple
way. He possesses a mysterious force which enables him to persist, heedless
of the sneers and laughter of the populace. It then strikes the wiser people
that he is dangerous; and they begin on the blasphemy and immorality tack.
In the life of our Lord, this will be noticed. In the first place, there was
just the contemptuous ``he hath a devil," which was the equivalent of our
``he's just a crank," but when it was found that this crank had adherents,
men of force and eloquence like Peter, to say nothing of financial genius
like Judas Iscariot, the cry was quickly changed into wild accusations of
blasphemy and allegations of immorality. ``He is a friend of publicans and
sinners." A sane Government only laughs at these ebullitions; and it is then
the task of the Pharisees to prove to the Government that it is to its
interest to suppress this dangerous upstart. They may succeed; and though the
Government is never for a moment blind to the fact that it is doing an
injustice, the new Saviour is crucified. It is this final publicity of
crucifixion (for advertisement is just as necessary in one age as another)
that secures the full triumph to him whom his enemies fondly suppose to be
their victim. Such is human blindness, that the messenger himself, his
enemies, and the civil power, all of them do exactly the one thing which will
defeat their ends. The messenger would never succeed at all if it were not
that he is The Messenger, and it really matters very little what steps he may
take to get the message delivered. For all concerned are but pawns in the
great game played by infinite wisdom and infinite power.


ORDERLY, DECOROUS CEREMONIES


It is, therefore, a negligible matter, this abuse, from whatever source it
comes. It should waste my time if I were to prove that the rites of Eleusis,
as now being performed at Caxton Hall, are orderly, decorous ceremonies. It
is true that at times darkness prevails; so it does in some of Wagner's
operas and in certain ceremonies of a mystical character which will occur to
the minds of a large section of my male readers. There are, moreover, periods
of profound silence, and I can quite understand that in such an age of talk
as this, that seems a very suspicious circumstance!